


Mine is the Shining Future

by brideofquiet



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Brooklyn, Friends to Lovers, Hiding Medical Issues, Historical Accuracy, Home, Immigration & Emigration, Irish Steve Rogers, M/M, Parent Illness, Period-Typical Homophobia, Pining, Pre-World War II Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Self-Discovery, Sexuality, Slow Burn, art student steve rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-09
Updated: 2018-03-24
Packaged: 2019-03-14 23:08:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 48,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13600383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brideofquiet/pseuds/brideofquiet
Summary: He could have a life here, but what would it be? He could be a grocer; he could marry a girl who remembers hearing his name on the prayer list nearly every Sunday mass. He could fill sketchbooks in his spare time and stuff them into a trunk under his bed when he’s exhausted their pages, never to be seen again. He could live and die on Friary Street.It would be a fine life, if a simple one. Something similar was enough for his mother. It should be enough for him, too. Is it?In late summer of 1937, Steve Rogers immigrates to America.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story is inspired by _Brooklyn_ , the novel by Colm Tóibín and subsequent 2015 film. I say inspired by, not based upon, because barring similar set-up and a few tent pole events, this work is very different. Credit where credit is due, though. You do not need to have read the book or seen the film to understand this.
> 
> The title comes from Mary Antin's memoir, _The Promised Land_.

At two o’clock, Steve Rogers turns the lock in the door of the Carters’ grocery shop. He flips the placard in the window to the side that reads  _ closed, _ then pivots back toward the counter. There’s still much to do before he leaves for the afternoon. He’s just set the ladder out so he can straighten the highest shelves when the door to the back room creaks open.

“I’ll finish that up, Steven,” Mr. Carter says. “Your mother’s waiting on you, I expect.”

“Yes,” Steve says, though he doubts Sarah Rogers is home yet herself. “Thank you, sir.”

He descends the ladder and replaces it while Mr. Carter bustles behind the counter and begins filling a large brown paper bag with produce and bread. Steve eyes the bag with a frown as he folds his apron to store it under the counter.

“Goodbye, then,” Steve says.

“Steven, aren’t you forgetting something?”

“Sir?”

“It’s Sunday.” Mr. Carter points toward the paper bag, now full and waiting.

“Oh,” Steve huffs, like he’d forgotten, though of course he hadn’t. He takes the bag up in his arms and holds it from the bottom. It’s heavy today.

“We’d only throw it away,” Mr. Carter says. “You’re doing us a favor by keeping it out of our rubbish.”

Steve nods and hefts the bag higher. “Yes, sir.”

“Now, I suppose I’ll see you again at eight o’clock.”

“... Mr. Carter?”

“You’ll be escorting Peggy to the dance this evening? Or have I gotten my wires crossed again?”

Steve nearly drops the bag. “She’s home?”

“Arrived yesterday—did I not tell you?”

Steve shakes his head.

“Oh, well, must’ve slipped through the cracks. I’ll see you at eight, Steven.”

“Yes, of course,” Steve says as Mr. Carter ushers him out the front door of the shop and onto the pavement. He smiles through the glass and locks the door before disappearing behind the counter again.

Steve sets off down the pavement toward Rafter Street. He takes care to keep the bag well positioned in his arms. Beneath half a loaf of oat bread, bright red tomatoes peak out. He knows the bread is just gone stale, and the tomatoes will be soft but still edible. There’s really no reason why all of it couldn’t still be sold, but the crowd that frequents Carters’ on a Sunday wouldn’t want soft tomatoes. Steve thinks they taste just fine.

He keys into the stone-faced house on Friary Street. After dropping his pocket change into the bowl on the hall stand, he continues toward the kitchen. His mother is already there, fussing over the stove. An apron protects her teal dress, bright against the cream of the walls, from being soiled. Her hair is pinned neatly up. She hums quietly to herself while prodding at the bacon sizzling away in the pan.

Steve clears his throat as he sets the groceries down on the kitchen table.

“Oh!” his mother gasps, spinning to face him. “Steve, dear, I didn’t hear you come in. I ought to put a bell on you.”

“I’m not a cat, Mam,” Steve says, smiling.

“Well, you move like one. Tap shoes?”

“Now there’s an idea.”

She smirks and points her spatula at him. “Slice that bread and we’ll have our tea.”

Once they’re sitting at the table, sandwiches on plates, Steve says, “Peggy’s home.”

His mother waves her napkin at him while she chews. “Yes, yes,” she says once she’s swallowed, “I know. I saw her at late mass today.”

“Am I the last person in all of County Wexford to find out?”

“Oh, don’t worry yourself. You’ll see her tonight, won’t you?”

At a quarter till eight, Steve pauses in the front hall to smooth his hair down in the mirror. It’s a lost cause, really; it never lies how he’d like it to. He pokes his head into the sitting room to wave to his mother.

She glances up at him over her reading glasses with a smile. “Have a nice time, love,” she says.

“Thank you.”

“Here, fetch my purse from the hall.”

“Mam, I don’t need—”

“Fine, don’t let your mother buy you a lemonade.”

“I can buy my own lemonade.”

“Yes, fine, go on then,” she says, flapping a hand at him and turning back to her book. “I see a grown man like you has no need of his mother.”

“Mam,” Steve sighs and crosses the room to her. He leans over her chair to kiss her cheek. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Yes,” she says. “Off with you now, Steve.”

It’s out of the way of the Athenaeum to walk all the way up to Cathedral Street again, but Steve doesn’t mind. The streetlamps light his way back to the Carters’ grocery. The family lives in the apartment above the shop. He knocks on the green door, three quick raps, then slides a step backward. He bounces on his toes as he waits, a smile already twisting at his mouth in anticipation.

When the door swings open, it’s Aileen behind it instead.

“Hi, Steve,” Peggy’s younger sister says. She tucks a strand of pale hair behind her ear, eyes darting nervously. “Peggy’ll be down in just a moment.”

“That’s fine, Aileen.” Steve shifts on his toes, then says, “How are you?”

“Just fine.”

Before Steve can think of something else to fill the stilted quiet, a voice calls down to them.

“I said I’d get the door, didn’t I, Aileen?”

Aileen glances over her shoulder, eyes wide. “Did you?”

“This one needs her ears checked,” Peggy says as she descends the stairs, coming into view. She smiles broadly and flicks her sister fondly on the shoulder. 

“Hi, Pegs,” Steve says and smiles.

“Hello yourself, stranger,” Peggy says. She shoos Aileen out of the doorway and onto the street. She shuts the door, then turns to face Steve and gives him a brisk once-over. “You look well.”

Steve hasn’t changed much in the months since he last saw her, but Peggy has discovered lipstick, apparently. Her mouth is raspberry pink, playing off the rich blue of her dress.

“You, too,” he says.

“A man of eloquence, as always.” Peggy chuckles as she takes his arm. “Aileen is coming with us tonight, if that’s fine with you.”

“Of course,” Steve says, glancing behind them as Peggy sets off down the pavement. Aileen blushes and hurries after them.

The hall is already crowded by the time they make it inside—as crowded as anywhere in Enniscorthy gets, anyway. The moment they cross the threshold, Aileen darts away to find her own friends, disappearing among the twirl of skirts and blazers. Still by the door, Peggy gives Steve’s elbow a squeeze. He leans closer to be heard over the band, which plays a jig from the stage.

“You’d think she doesn’t want to be seen with me,” he says.

“Give her more credit than that, Steve, please.”

Steve shrugs, offhand, and decides to let it go. Peggy gives him a sideways look, but changes the subject quickly enough.

“Care to dance?”

“Wouldn’t you like something to drink first?” Steve asks.

Her smile twists. “You’re trying to weasel out of it, aren’t you?”

“No!” Steve says, but when Peggy narrows her eyes, his shoulders sag. “No weaseling, I promise. Let’s just have a lemonade first.”

“Fine.” 

Peggy leads him toward the soda bar at the hall’s edge. He trails after her, sorry for making her wait. It’s only that he needs to re-acclimatize; he hasn’t come to the Athenaeum since she’s been away at university. He hadn’t seen the point, really. None of the Rugby Club boys want anything to do with him, never did beyond bloodying him up for sport, and Peggy was the only girl who’d ever been patient enough to wait for him to string two words together. He supposes he could have come anyway and asked someone else to dance, but he had never felt the desire to without her. That she asked was the only reason he ever came.

They sip their sodas while they watch the other dancers and spectators.

“Do you know, I remembered it being bigger than this,” Peggy says.

“I suppose everything here looks small to you now.”

“Have you got a magnifying glass handy? I’ll need it to keep from squishing your feet like an ant.”

Steve laughs; Peggy chuckles too, bumping her elbow with his. He had missed her more than he’d realized. “How is London?” he asks.

“Oh, fine, fine,” she hums, affectedly casual. Steve eyes her, one brow raised, till she cracks a smile. “It’s lovely, Steve. Nothing like Enniscorthy, of course, but I don’t mind that so much.”

“Do you miss it at all?”

“Some things,” she says, and Steve follows her gaze to where Aileen has made it to the dancefloor with a friend. She finishes the last of her soda, then swipes Steve’s bottle from him. “Now I believe you promised me a dance.”

Dancing isn’t so hard with Peggy. Steve might even like it, if only for seeing how much she enjoys it, even when he treads on her toes. He has been getting better, though; he doesn’t scuff her shiny white shoes at all. She smiles sweetly, like she’s noticed, before spinning out for a twirl.

On a slower number, she slides in close and fits her arms around his shoulders. Steve holds her waist the same way every other man in the hall holds his girl—only it isn’t like that between them. It never has been, much as it might look; much as people like to assume that it is. Peggy had always been too much for him, he knew—too much for Enniscorthy, too, as she’d proven by leaving the town behind her. Steve sighs quietly, a sudden wash of bitterness at the back of his throat.

“Steve?” Peggy asks. “Are you alright?”

“Yes, of course,” he says. “I’m just happy you’re here.”

“You don’t look it.”

“Sorry, I …”

He falls quiet as the strings swell. Peggy regards him, her mouth pinched, as they revolve slowly around the room. It’s getting late; they ought to leave after another song or two, to get Aileen home before Mrs. Carter starts to fret. Steve opens his mouth to suggest they find her, but Peggy cuts across him.

“You could leave, too, you know,” she says.

Steve pulls up short, baffled. The rest of the crowd continues to dance, scowling as they divert around them. It takes Peggy pinching his neck for Steve to come unstuck. He yelps and swats at her wrist, but she doesn’t pull away, just pulls him back into sluggish rotation across the floor.

“Did you hear me?” she asks.

“I did.”

“Haven’t you ever thought of it, Steve? Surely you have.”

“I—haven’t, no.” That’s true enough. He’d imagined change for himself, sure—but not this way. “Ireland is home.”

“It is,” Peggy says. She nods, her mouth a tight, unreadable line. “But it’s not the only place on Earth.”

Steve can’t find a way argue with that.

 

Monday passes as it always does. By the time Steve wakes at seven o’clock, his mother is bustling out the door on her way to St. Senan’s for an early shift. She kisses his cheek when he reaches the foot of the stairs, then takes her exit. A cup of tea sits waiting for him in the kitchen, and she had left the jam out for his toast.

He sees the same Monday faces at the shop. Mrs. Connolly, who likes her butter left out of the bag. Mr. Walsh for his pack of cigarettes and tin of mints. Nancy O’Hughe wants the very freshest bread, has him check with Mr. Carter about the dates, and even then she must feel the loaf before she decides; the whole ordeal takes ten minutes. 

He makes it home in time to have dinner started before his mother comes in. Terrible, that she leaves before him and comes home after, then has to eat his cooking. That’s something else he’s gotten better at, but he’ll never have the talent for it that she does. As it is, he can bake a potato without much trouble.

After dinner they sit in the front room, his mother mending her uniform while Steve doodles aimlessly in his worn-out sketchbook—a flock of birds, all lumped together on the back page of a finished drawing. He’s run out of paper again, but Gregory’s hasn’t had another book in stock. Maybe he’ll check again tomorrow; it’s getting dire.

“Oh, Steve,” his mother says, hardly glancing up from her sewing. Her glasses have slid halfway down her nose.

“Yes?”

“We’ll be having Father Healy over for dinner tomorrow.”

“Healy?” Steve asks, setting his pencil down. The priest at St. Aidan’s is called Father Reid.

“Yes, he’s visiting town—used to live here—and I’ve told him to come for dinner tomorrow. Don’t worry, I’ll do the cooking.”

“Fine. Where is he visiting from?”

“He’s come from America, Peggy told me.” 

Steve’s eyes flicker up to meet hers; her mouth has a strange tilt to it. “America?”

“New York—a place called Brooklyn.”

 

Father Healy is a stout, bespectacled man who favors words over smiles. Steve finds him gruff, but his mother seems to think just the opposite. Over dinner she regales him with tales of the town, detailing what seems like every birth and death since Father Healy emigrated to America over twenty years ago. There’s not all that much that’s changed. The River Slaney still flows the same direction, and St. Aidan’s bell still rings in the hours; but Father Healy listens as he eats his fill.

“A lovely meal, Sarah,” he says as Steve clears away the plates. The priest’s accent has faded, but it’s still distinctly Wexford. “Perhaps we should have some tea in the sitting room.”

“Well, thank you, Father Healy,” Steve’s mother says. “We have tea—or whisky, if you’d prefer.”

Father Healy’s eyes narrow behind his glasses, and for a moment Steve thinks she may have misstepped. But then he cracks a sly smile. “Aye, fine, whisky it is. Steven, join us.”

Steve follows the both of them to the front room, where his mother is flicking on the lamps. Father Healy settles into the wingback chair by the fireplace, the one Steve usually takes, but he supposes it’s right to let the priest have his chair. He finds three glasses in the sideboard, wiping the dust out surreptitiously with the sleeve of his cardigan. The whisky bottle makes a quiet pop when he uncorks it.

“Oh, Steve dear, no—the decanter, would you?”

Over his shoulder, Steve meets her eye. She smiles encouragingly, so with a shrug, he fits the cork back in the bottle and picks up the glass decanter instead. This, his mother only opens on special occasions; Steve doubts it has had to be refilled in many years.

He pours them each two fingers’ worth, handing a glass to his mother before doubling back for his and the priest’s.

“Thank you,” Father Healy says as Steve passes him the glass. The priest peers at him through his thick-lensed glasses as Steve takes a seat next to his mother on the couch. Father Healy takes a slow sip of his drink and hums appreciatively, before returning his sharp gaze to Steve.

Steve has the distinct feeling of being inspected. He takes a quick gulp of his whisky to keep from glaring back or squirming in his seat. It burns on the way down.

“How old are you, Steven?” the priest asks.

“I’ll be 19 next month.”

“July the fourth,” his mother interjects.

Father Healy’s brow raises, something like amusement in his eyes. “Is that so?”

Steve nods, wondering what reason he would have to lie about his birthday. His mother pats his knee; he takes another sip of his drink.

“I suppose you’re done with school, then,” Father Healy says.

“Yes, I finished up my certificate this spring,” Steve says.

“He was ill, you see,” his mother says, “when he was young, so he got a year behind.”

She’s rather underselling it, Steve thinks, but he doesn’t bother correcting her. Father Healy needn’t know how frequently he had accompanied his mother to the hospital.

“How did you do?” the priest asks.

“Well enough,” Steve says.

“Do you plan to take any more courses at the vocational school or elsewhere?”

“I haven’t decided.”

“What subjects would you study, if you did?”

“Art was always my favorite, so that, if I had to pick.”

Father Healy spies his frown from across the room. “Something wrong, Steven?”

Steve shifts, unsure how much to say, but his mother prods his ankle with her foot. He sighs quietly. “From what I’ve seen, the curriculum lacks direction. I don’t know that I would be accomplishing or learning anything from being there, which is why I haven’t enrolled.”

“That would feel dissatisfying, yes,” Father Healy says. “I would imagine. I hear from Margaret Carter you’re quite the artist. You work at her family’s shop, is that correct?”

“Yes, father, I do.”

“And how long have you been there?”

“Just over a year.”

“How does it suit you?”

“It suits me just fine,” Steve says, perhaps more harshly than he intends. He sees, from the corner of his eye, his mother throw him a sharp look. He doesn’t feel particularly remorseful; if there’s a point to the priest’s line of questioning, Steve would prefer that he get to it sooner rather than later.

“Does your work there leave you much time for your art?” Father Healy says.

“Time enough,” Steve says.

“I know a mother’s word only goes so far, but he really is very talented,” his mother adds. She hiccoughs quietly, and Steve glances over as she sets her empty glass on the side table. 

“I’m not an artist myself, but I do appreciate good work when I see it.” Father Healy sets his glass to the side—not quite empty—as well and leans toward Steve. “If you’re willing to share, Steven.”

“I’m not so sure—” Steve starts, but his mother pinches his shoulder and gives him a stern look.

“He’s only curious, love.”

Mouth pressed into a flat line, Steve’s eyes flicker from her to Father Healy’s placidly curious expression. He nearly refuses on principle, irritated at being goaded this way, but he would never hear the end of it from his mother. Besides, he doesn’t make a habit of being rude to priests. 

Without so much as a put-upon sigh, he sets his glass aside to go fetch something for the priest to appraise. As he trundles up the stairs to his room, he wonders what Father Healy’s taste is like—landscapes, portraits? His quick deliberation ends with him swiping his sketchbook from the nightstand. It’s impressive in its density alone, he supposes—though really, who is he trying to impress?

Back in the front room, he flips to a particular page before holding out the open book to Father Healy. He takes up his glass again once he’s on the couch, noticing it’s been refilled. His mother gives him a soft smile over the rim of her own glass as she swirls its contents.

Father Healy spends a long minute looking at the page. “Who is this?” he asks quietly.

“Mr. Sullivan,” Steve says. “He feeds the ducks along the Promenade before mass every Wednesday.”

Father Healy hums and nods, then turns the page. Steve watches him look, waiting for some kind of reaction, but his face stays decidedly neutral even as his glasses slide further down his ample nose. All he does is hum noncommittal noises and ask unobtrusive questions.

Then, gently, he closes the book and rests one hand on the cover where it sits in his lap. He adjust his glasses before reaching for his whisky. After a long pull, he meets Steve’s eye across the dim room.

“You know, Steven, in Brooklyn there are so many Irish, it hardly feels as if one has left home,” he says. The corner of his mouth twitches; it’s nearly a smile.

“Really?” Steve asks, for lack of anything better to say.

“It’s true.”

“It sounds wonderful,” Steve’s mother interjects, voice wobbly. When Steve looks at her, her eyes are watery. He frowns, starts to say something, but—

“You would need someone to sponsor you, of course,” Father Healy says.

“Mam, are you—”

“I would be willing to act as your sponsor, Steven.”

“Oh, Father Healy—”

“Excuse me.” Steve’s glass clinks against the table when he sets it aside. “I believe I’ve missed something. My sponsor for what?”

“Your immigration sponsor, of course,” Father Healy says. “I would be responsible for your transition to America.”

Steve’s face darkens. “Why would I leave Ireland?”

“Oh, my dear boy, you won’t find the kind of future you want here.”

“How would you know what I want?”

“It’s all right here,” Father Healy says, tapping his fingers to the cover of Steve’s sketchbook. “Right inside. I agree with your mother; you have true talent.”

A slow exhale is all Steve can manage in response. His mother’s hand finds his knee and squeezes tight.

“Of course, I can’t promise all that much, times being what they are—but there’s certainly more opportunity for someone like yourself in Brooklyn than here in Enniscorthy, you’ll come to agree. I have a few connections at the WPA, and now and again I’ve rubbed elbows with some artists you may have heard of. 

“Now, Sarah, we’ll need his birth certificate and medical records to get started. His health might be a hang-up, but since you’re a nurse ...”

Steve loses the rest of the sentence to the thrumming sound of his heart, which feels as if it’s lodged itself in his throat. He isn’t sure that it would matter if he could say anything, anyway.

 

He will need the proper papers, his mother tells him. She helps him file for a passport, put together a simple portfolio to send back with Father Healy; he also needs a visa and a train ticket and ship passage. It feels as if it’s all happening much too quickly—so quickly he can’t get a word in edgewise. The day she starts pulling his father’s old things from the bottom drawers of her dresser to alter for him, Steve makes an excuse to leave before she finds her measuring tape and sewing kit.

He takes the hill down Mill Yard Lane toward the Promenade. He walks along the river, headed south, and would likely walk all the way to St. Senan’s if it weren’t already beginning to get dark. He doesn’t quite remember what he’d said to his mother, but whatever it was, it certainly couldn’t excuse him for that long. He finds a bench along the water and drops onto it, wet with rainwater in the balmy summer air.

The river churns languidly by, the ducks settled on the bank for the evening. People stroll along the path behind him. Their chatter is too quiet for him to discern words.

Peggy put his mother up to this, he knows now. She’d come down to the shop on Tuesday morning to say hello.

“How was your dinner with Father Healy?” she had asked, innocent as anything.

“As if you haven’t heard.” He had slid the next can onto the shelf with more force than the task called for.

“I hadn’t, actually.” Her face soured. “I’d like to, though.”

“He wants to send me to America—to Brooklyn.”

“Won’t you even consider it?”

“I like my life here just fine, thank you, Peggy,” he said. “Though it seems I haven’t much say in the matter. I’m to return the application for my visa tomorrow morning.”

“Steve.”

“What?”

“My father will make you pay for that hair pomade if you bust the tin.”

With a loud exhale, he paused a moment to gather himself. Then, with a bit more care, he placed the last of the tins on the shelf before turning to face Peggy properly. The sympathetic tilt of her eyebrows made him want to spin back around again.

“How would you imagine your life,” she said slowly, “if you were to stay here in Enniscorthy?”

“I—” he started. “Well, there’s my mam …”

He frowned down at the counter so he didn’t have to see her self-satisfied look.

“My father will keep you on as long as you’d like to work here, I imagine,” she said. “But there’s no chance of advancement. You can’t tell me you’re satisfied with that.”

She paused; he said nothing.

“You have an opportunity here, Steve, to get away from the people who will only ever see you as a poor, sickly child. You have an opportunity to be more.” 

“What if I don’t want more?” he muttered.

She laid her hand on top of his. “I know that you do.”

She’d gone after that, leaving him to stew by himself for the rest of his shift.

And now, more than a week later, he’s still stewing—but he understands her point. Much as he’s loathe to admit it, he knows that she’s right. He could have a life here, but what would it be? He could be a grocer; he could marry a girl who remembers hearing his name on the prayer list nearly every Sunday mass. He could fill sketchbooks in his spare time and stuff them into a trunk under his bed when he’s exhausted their pages, never to be seen again. He could live and die on Friary Street.

It would be a fine life, if a simple one. Something similar was enough for his mother. It should be enough for him, too.

Is it?

In Brooklyn, there are so many Irish, it’s as if you’re still in Ireland. If that’s true—if Father Healy could really help him find a job painting murals like he had said, or teaching art classes …

His mother thinks that he should go. Neither she nor Peggy have ever steered him wrong before. He wants to argue with her, ask her why she wants to send him away—but he knows the answer. Sarah Rogers has only ever wanted what was best for her son. 

A duck squawks at him from the bank. He runs a hand over his face and sighs quietly. Then he gets up to head back toward home, where his mother waits for him.

 

“I ought to have bought you more shoes,” his mother says. “Are those the only ones you have? Surely there’s another pair you’re forgetting somewhere.”

“No, Mam,” Steve says, tucking his dress shoes into the netting in the top compartment of his trunk. He’s wearing his only other pair. “I have enough.”

“It all fits in one.” She runs a hand over the two neat piles of his clothes. There are his things, layered with what items of his father’s she could alter to fit him. The latch will close without any trouble, he’s sure.

“You’ve given me enough,” he says softly.

She turns to him, her eyes welling, though she’d promised not to cry till she saw him off at the ferry from Dublin. He can’t begrudge her it. His own eyes sting as he wraps his arms around her thin shoulders for a hug. She holds him fast against her, and she sniffles and shudders as she tucks her head under his chin. They’re of a height, now—he’s built like her, though he favors his father in face and coloring. Her auburn hair tickles his chin, but he doesn’t mind.

“Oh,” she huffs, pulling back. “Dear me, just a moment.” 

She pulls a handkerchief from her pocket to wipe her cheeks, then reaches up to dab at Steve’s eyes where they’ve watered too. Her smile grows warm when she lays a palm over his cheek.

“Our train is in half an hour,” Steve says.

“Yes, we mustn’t be late,” she says, shooing him to the side to fiddle with the latch of his trunk. “There’s just one last thing.”

She leads him downstairs to the mantle, where on the right hand side, a photograph sits in its frame. It’s the only picture of the three of them together. There are others, from his mother and father’s wedding day, photos of just Steve—but in this one, there’s the whole family: his mother holding him while his father stands behind, his hand resting on her shoulder. He’d been very young, two or three years old, when it was taken. He hadn’t been much older when Joseph Rogers had died. The man had fought one war only to die in the next—but he’d helped win Ireland its independence, in the end. Steve can only hope to do something so brave or significant.

Steve doesn’t remember the unsmiling man in the photograph; but he does remember his da, who’d sit him on a knee or a shoulder, who was full of stories and songs. He laughed, and made Sarah laugh—that’s what he remembers, that warmth. It’s always felt fitting to Steve, that they keep his picture over the fireplace.

“I’d like you to take this with you,” his mother says. She takes the frame from the mantle and pushes it at him.

“Mam, I can’t—”

“I’d only send it along in the post if you didn’t take it, Steve. Please.”

Her eyes, round and pleading, make him see how much this means to her. He takes the frame, but as he tucks it into his trunk with his shoes, he can’t help but feel like he’s stealing something precious from her.

“Come along now,” she says. “We’ll be late meeting Peggy.”

They find all the Carters gathered in the lobby of the train station across the river. Peggy spots them past her mother’s shoulder and waves them over.

“Do you have your tickets?” she asks once Steve and his mother have crossed to them.

Steve nods, fishing them out of his coat pocket to show her. She smiles brightly and brandishes her own.

“It’s nearly time,” his mother says. “We should be boarding.”

“Of course,” Peggy says, turning back to her family for a final round of hugs. This isn’t the first time they’ve seen her off, nor will it be the last. She’ll be home again on Christmas. Across the channel isn’t so far. Ship passage across the Atlantic is expensive, and time-consuming too. Steve’s not sure when he’ll next see Irish shores after today.

The Carters all turn to him next as Peggy gathers up her trunk. Mr. Carter shakes his hand, thanking him for all his help at the shop. Aileen gives him a quick hug before ducking away. The expression on Mrs. Carter’s face as she pulls him into a hug is stern.

He’d already said his goodbyes to most everyone else at mass on Sunday. It had taken most of the summer for him to gather all the necessary paperwork, even with Father Healy’s guidance. By the time he had everything in order, the whole town knew of his imminent departure. They had been sure to let him know their opinions about it, too. He hadn’t cared so much; though it hardly felt like his choice, if it was anyone’s, it certainly wasn’t theirs.

Mrs. Carter leans back, looks him in the eye, and says, “You be sure to write to your mother every day, Steven Rogers. You’re leaving her all alone here.”

“I will,” he says, rough around the lump in his throat.

She points a finger at him as she lets him go. “Every day.”

They board the train and leave Enniscorthy behind.

 

It’s a nice day in Dublin, the sun making a strong appearance for once. The three of them have lunch together before heading down to the docks, where the ferry to Liverpool is set to depart.

“Here, Steve, I’ll go make sure our tickets are in order,” Peggy says, holding out a hand. Steve passes his ticket to her with a silent thank you before turning back to his mother. She’s digging in her pocketbook, a frown on her face.

“Mam?”

“I can’t seem to find my—my—”

“Mam, Peggy’s gone to the ticket booth,” Steve says.

Finally, she looks up. Steve can see that her eyes are already red-rimmed. “Has she?”

“She has.”

They stand there, silent, as similar scenes play out around them. His mother isn’t the first to say goodbye to a child in this spot, and she won’t be the last either. Steve thinks back to what Mrs. Carter had told him this morning, and his throat locks up. Neither of them seem able to get the word—any word at all—out, though. 

“I’m sorry,” his mother huffs, glancing away. Her lip trembles. “I’m afraid I don’t know how to say goodbye to you.”

“Well, you don’t have to,” Steve says thickly. “There’s no rules to it.”

“I know, I—” Her eyes, which had been watering, spill over now. “Oh, look at me.”

“Here,” Steve says, setting his trunk aside to pull her in. He wraps her up and tucks his chin over her shoulder. Her sniffles pitch louder, and then quiet.

“I wish I’d thought of something nice to say to send you off,” she says into his shoulder. “I’m coming up rather blank.”

“That’s okay.”

She pulls back, not away, but enough to see his face. “You stay out of trouble, Steve.”

Steve laughs wetly, and she cracks a smile too, shaking him a little.

“I mean it,” she says.

“I’ll not make you any promises I can’t keep, Mam, but I will try.”

“You’d better.” She squeezes him a last time and steps back. “This is a fresh start for you. Don’t you squander it away.”

“I won’t.”

Steve spies Peggy over his mother’s shoulder. She doesn’t approach, but she points to the ship and taps her wrist. His mother glances over her shoulder and sees Peggy.

“Alright,” she says, looking back at Steve. She reaches out a hand to pat his cheek. “Bye now, Steve.”

Steve traps her hand under his own. Her fingers are cool and slender against his face, just as they’ve always been. “Bye, Mam.”

Her smile is somber, but still warm somehow, as she frees her hand and steps back from him. He picks up his truck by the handle, and he’s halfway along the dock to Peggy before he stops looking back.

From the deck, Peggy spies her in the crowd. She grabs Steve’s hand and points, and together they wave to his mother as the boat weighs anchor and starts to pull away from the dock.

 

During their brief stay in Liverpool before he boards the ship for America and she takes a train to London, he asks Peggy something he’s waited all summer to ask.

“How do you manage it?”

“What?” she asks, peering at him. “Oh, the homesickness, you mean?”

“Yes.”

She shrugs. “Same as any other sickness. Either it goes away, or you learn how to live with it.”

That’s not particularly helpful advice, though Steve isn’t sure what he expected her to say. It’s not like there’s some magic method to it. She seems to understand, though, and takes his hand.

“You’ll do fine, Steve,” she says. “I know you will.”

She may be right. He wishes he were as confident about it.

 

The ship is miserable. He knew that it would be, down in steerage, but good  _ Christ _ is it awful. He’s hardly had the energy to stand, much less enjoy the view of the open ocean or even the book he’d packed with him. It’s been two days, and all he’s done is repeatedly expel the contents of his stomach into any available receptacle. Even after he had stopped eating, it still felt as if his stomach was trying to heave itself out of him.

His bunkmate says it was to be expected. Steve has never been to sea before, so of course he would get sick. He should have thought of it himself. It isn’t the worst illness he’s ever suffered through, but that’s hardly a comfort.

He had woken up after the first night to someone dabbing his forehead with a damp cloth. It had taken him a moment to remember that his mother’s hair wasn’t so bright a red, nor so short.

“First time across?” the man had asked.

Steve had nodded weakly, eyelids fluttering.

“Could hear you retching from down the hall, you poor sap. You had the mutton stew, didn’t you?”

Steve had nodded again, his cheek pressed against the man’s thigh.

“You stupid bastard,” the man had muttered. He petted Steve’s hair back from his sweaty forehead; the touch felt nice. “You’ll have water and nothing else till you’ve settled. I’ll fetch you some.”

He’d brought Steve back a tall glass of cool water and helped him sit up to drink it. “The name’s Glenn.”

“Steve,” he’d croaked.

Glenn doesn’t linger in the cabin much, and Steve can’t blame him. The whole hall smells terrible; it would seem Steve’s not the only one with a weak stomach. But after a few days, the worst of the rolling in Steve’s gut seems to pass. Glenn rewards him with a pack of crackers and a foray up onto the deck.

“Wow,” Steve murmurs when he gets his first glimpse of the water stretching all the way to the horizon, no matter which direction he turns.

“Yeah, yeah,” Glenn says, “sure is beautiful.”

Steve cracks his first smile in days. “You don’t think so?”

“I’d be happy if I never saw it again.”

“Don’t you live in America?”

“Chicago.”

“But if you never saw the ocean again, then you would never—”

“Oh, I know,” Glenn cuts across him. He reaches out to grip Steve’s shoulder, smile turned knowing, though Steve’s not sure what Glenn thinks he knows. “You’ll understand soon enough, Steve.”

 

On the morning of the day they’re meant to disembark, Glenn pokes his head into the room after his morning smoke while Steve is repacking his trunk.

“Oh, he’s industrious, is he,” Glenn teases.

“Just trying to be ready.”

“Yes, sure, only—” Glenn strides across the room and spins Steve around to face him. He looks Steve over, tongue between his teeth and shaking his head. “No, you’ll never make it through like this. You look like a corpse we plucked out of the water on the journey.”

Steve bristles, swatting Glenn’s hands from his shoulders. “I do not—”

“I’m certain you were handsome when you were alive, Steve. Don’t worry, I’ll revive you.”

He helps Steve pick out an outfit that makes him look respectable, then sits Steve down on the bottom bunk and rifles through his own disorganized bag.

“Now, don’t squabble,” Glenn says, holding up a pot of rouge, “but you really do need some color in your cheeks.”

Steve eyes the pot skeptically, his gaze flickering to Glenn’s face. “What was it you said you did again?”

“I’m an actor.” Then Glenn’s sitting beside him, dabbing _ just a touch, Steve, promise _ of rouge onto the apples of his cheeks. His heart rate picks up, watching the intent look in Glenn’s eye. He supposes it’s the nerves, now that they’re getting so close to shore.

“There.” Glenn pulls back, smiling wide. “He’s alive.”

Later in the day, the Statue of Liberty soars up out of the the bay, her torch held high. Steve expects clapping, maybe cheers, but as he looks around, the other passengers are simply staring at her, transfixed. Some even doff their hats. They’ll pass close by on the way to Ellis Island. It won’t be long now.

“How’s that poem go?” Glenn points toward the statue. “‘Give me your tired, your poor,’ something or other.”

“Yes, that’s it exactly,” Steve deadpans.

Glenn claps his shoulder, chuckling. “Welcome to America, Steve.”

 

On line with the rest of the disembarked passengers, he stands straight like Glenn had told him. Chin high, but not so high they’ll think you’re haughty; face even, but not so even it seems you’re thinking nothing at all. It’s a long walk from the barges, through the main hall, and up the stairs. This time, though, Steve knows he’s being watched. He’s prepared.

It takes a long time. Sets of iron railings keep him and all the others separated into neat lines across the length of the hall. A few meters ahead, a man in a heavy black coat shuffles forward; behind Steve, there’s a woman in a shawl speaking with a translator in a language Steve doesn’t understand. The line crawls forward. 

Steve watches as the first doctor inspects the man ahead of him. The man receives a scrawling “B” across the lapel of his coat. Steve isn’t sure what it means, only that it probably isn’t good as an attendant diverts him to the second of two more lines.

As he approaches the doctor for his own exam, Steve feels his chest tightening, his breath going shorter. He’s careful not to let his nerves show on his face, though. The doctor, holding a slim piece of white chalk, has Steve tilt his head back into the light, hold out his hands, remove his hat. He runs cold fingers over Steve’s scalp with clinical, practiced motions. He’s done this a thousand times; he’s done it a thousand times today alone.

Steve keeps his breath as even as he can as the doctor lays a hand against his back and chest. The doctor squints at nothing, the middle distance, then moves one hand to Steve’s ribs and feels him breath. The touch makes it worse, somehow, and Steve fights to keep from gasping. The doctor peers at him with narrowed eyes, watching the rise and fall of his chest.

He fiddles with his chalk. Then, with a quiet hum in the back of his throat, he writes an “A” along Steve’s jacket lapel.

Steve’s eyes widen, glancing down at it—bright white against the grey fabric. But the doctor just pats his shoulder and shoos him along to the second doctor. That one inspects Steve’s eyes perfunctorily before passing him off to an attendant, who shunts him toward a hall labeled Public Health Service. 

He waits on one of three crowded benches for a doctor to call his number. Eyes trained on the ground, he can’t help picturing what it would be to show up back on his mother’s doorstep, having been turned away. After all her effort, what could he possibly say to her?

There wouldn’t be anything to say. He’d simply try again. Try and try until they let him through. Circle round the building as many times as it took, lugging his trunk along.

When his number is called, he marches to the curtained exam room with trepidation, but a fierce sense of determination too. He’s not sure he cares about belonging in this country, but he’ll be damned if he lets anyone tell him that he might not.

This doctor—so many doctors—glances at Steve’s lapel before asking him to remove his jacket. The stethoscope is cold against his skin as the doctor listens to his lungs.

“Have you been diagnosed with asthma?” the doctor asks.

“Yes, as a child.”

“And what do you do for that?”

“Epinephrine through a nebulizer or injection as needed. My mother is a nurse. I’ve a handle on it.”

“Fine enough,” the doctor says. “Your heartbeat is arrhythmic too. Were you aware of that?”

“Yes. It should be in my record.”

“Hmm.” The doctor glances from Steve’s card and back to his face, nodding to himself. He marks something on the card before handing it back to Steve. 

He’s been passed through, somehow—miraculously maybe, given his health record. But he’ll take it; he’ll take it as a miracle and run.

An attendant guides him to one last line. At the head of this one, another inspector sits behind a high desk with the ship’s manifest before him. Steve does his best not to fidget as he waits his turn.

He approaches the high desk with a sense of resolve. He’s nearly made it through. He can see the doors past the desk, open to the world. The immigration inspector asks him a quick series of questions as he thumbs over the ship manifest, eyeing Steve over a grizzled mustache. Steve answers plainly, truthfully; there’s nothing to lie about, and nothing to worry about either. The doctors had passed him. His information is correct.

“Where is your final destination, Mr. Rogers?” the inspector asks.

Steve lifts his chin. “Brooklyn, sir.”

The man asks after Steve’s accent, not part of the questionnaire. His stern expression melts as he says he has family in County Wexford. Then he gives the card a stamp and Steve a nod, and waves him toward the door.

The clouds must have cleared while he was inside. As he steps through the wide door, the sun is so bright and blinding he feels as if he’s stepped into the proverbial light.   

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you are inclined to support your local lady (me) and also this work, you can reblog [this post](http://bride-ofquiet.tumblr.com/post/170697794378/mine-is-the-shining-future-in-late-summer-of-1937) on tumblr!


	2. Chapter 2

_ Dear Mother, _ _   
_ _ I received your letter. Thank you for writing so often. I miss you and _

_ Dear Mother, _ _   
_ _ Thank you for the letter. I am sorry about your patient. I know that is hard on you. I wish that I were _

_ Dear Peggy, _ _   
_ _ Thank you for _

_ Dear Mother, _ _   
_ _ Thank you for the letter. I am doing great here in Brooklyn. I draw every day and I can see the Statue of Liberty from my window. It is all very glamorous and I am happy _

Steve balls up that piece of paper too and tosses it in the waste bin with the others. He tears another sheet loose and presses the tip of his pen to it. If there’s any benefit to clerking for a paper company, he supposes it’s the discounted rate he gets on 100-sheet reems. He has enough crisp white paper to write his mother an entire novel, if only he had something to fill the pages; anything at all to say to her.

He wavers, draws the first line of the “D,” and pauses again. He could draw her something instead, perhaps. That may be better: a sketch of the view from his window, which isn’t necessarily beautiful, but he likes the way the light pours between the buildings in the morning before the street whirls to life. 

He could draw her the office. He’d been disappointed at first, when Father Healy explained that he couldn’t find Steve a job with the Federal Art Project. New rules only allow citizens to work with the project. The paper company is fine, though. He could show her his desk where he does the filing, or the office manager Mr. Kirkland’s benign smile.

The streetcar or the subway, the neighbor’s cat that perches on the fire escape to stare at him across the alley, his faulty radio, the tiny range where he does his cooking. He wants her to see everything—but she would know. Mothers always know, especially his mother, from whom he could never hide a thing.

He pulls her first letter from the breast pocket of his shirt and thumbs it open again.

_ Dear Steve, _ _   
_ _ How are you? How was the voyage? I hope you are settling in to Brooklyn. I hope everyone treats you well. Please write to tell me. At the hospital today,  _

There was no need for him to continue. He had read it enough times to have it memorized by now. When it had first come, he had been here for two weeks. In the midst of travel and adjustment, he’d barely had time to pause, much less consider the ache in the center of his heart. But the moment he had seen her handwriting—

What can he tell her that won’t disappoint her? That doesn’t paint him as a failure? What can he say that won’t break her heart?

Not to say that he’s miserable all the time. What was it Peggy had said to him, that she’d repeated in her letters? You learn to live with it. During the day, when he has things to be doing, he lives with it. He does his job as best he can. The other men in the office learn to let him alone so that he can focus. He goes to church every week and is sure to check in with Father Healy when he is able.

It’s only when he’s back behind his closed door, alone, that the ache finds him again. The home where he had grown up had been so quiet, only the sound of his mother humming a song as she puttered around. This building—the whole of Brooklyn—is terribly loud. He can hear his neighbors through the wall, their kettles whistling, the floorboards creaking. He hears passersby on the street. Laughter, conversation in foreign tongues, the thud of heavy heels.

Over two million people in this city, and yet Steve feels as if he may as well have been marooned in the middle of the sea for how lonely he feels.

He sets his pen to the side and decides to take a walk instead. Perhaps, after some fresh air, he will think of something he can bear to tell her.

 

“Steve, do you have those reports for me?”

“Yes, Mr. Kirkland.” 

Steve passes him a neat stack of manila folders without glancing up from his desk. Mr. Kirkland takes them, but when Steve doesn’t hear him walk away, he sets his pen aside and looks up. Mr. Kirkland is frowning down at him, a crease between his thick black brows.

“Steve,” he says.

“Yes, Mr. Kirkland?”

“Come with me for a moment, please.”

Steve rises from his seat and pushes it in before following Mr. Kirkland up the aisle of desks toward his small office at the front of the room. Steve’s coworkers look up from their own work as they pass, trading curious glances with each other. Steve stares firmly ahead at the back of Mr. Kirkland’s camel-colored suit jacket.

“Take a seat, please.”

With the door closed behind them, Mr. Kirkland circles around his desk while Steve takes the seat across from him. He shifts uncomfortably, not sure where he ought to look, or why he’s here. Just as he opens his mouth to ask, Mr. Kirkland’s cuckoo clock springs to life to call out the noon hour. Steve waits, mouth twisting, for it to finish all twelve chirps. 

“Sir,” Steve says once the office is quiet again, “may I ask why I’m here?”

Mr. Kirkland steeples his hands on his desk. “You’re a very diligent worker. One of the most focused young men I’ve ever had at this company.”

“Thank you, but then—”

“How old are you, Steve?”

“I’m 19, sir.”

“You’re very serious for your age. Do you think the other men in the office are difficult for you to get along with because of that?”

“I—” Steve starts, then sits back heavily in his chair, frowning. “I wasn’t aware socializing was one of my job responsibilities, Mr. Kirkland.”

Mr. Kirkland smiles, pinched, and points a finger at him. “Aha, see, and there’s our problem. It’s not a responsibility to get along with your coworkers. I believe it’d make us all a bit more comfortable if you tried to, though.”

“Am I in trouble?”

“No, no, of course not. I just like to see camaraderie in my office. It makes everyone’s day easier.”

Steve takes a slow breath, trying to remember a time he’d been anything but professional with anyone he worked with. He knows the others will pretend they can’t understand his accent for a laugh, but he’s never brought attention to it. He may be short sometimes, but there’s work to be done. The office isn’t a pub, and shouldn’t be—but perhaps he could trade his perfunctory nods for a smile now and again, if it would help. 

He sighs softly, and gives it a try. “I understand, Mr. Kirkland.”

“Good.” Mr. Kirkland returns his smile. “Adjusting to a new job can be difficult, I know, let alone your other circumstances. We’re happy to have you, and we’d like you to be happy to be here.”

Steve nods. 

“Now, it’s lunch hour. I’ve sent word to Father Healy to meet you at Newman’s two blocks over. Do you know it?”

“I do,” Steve says, fighting to keep his frown away.

“Hurry along then. You wouldn’t want to keep him waiting.”

On the walk back to his desk for his hat, Steve tries the smile tactic again. A few men return it as they gather their own things, albeit a bit dubiously; Steve has made something of a reputation for himself. He’ll have to try harder, if it’s that important to Mr. Kirkland.

The late summer heat outside is sweltering. Steve adjusts his hat to keep the glaring sun out of his eyes as he navigates pedestrian traffic on the pavement. In another ten minutes, he walks through the door of Newman’s to find Father Healy perched at a corner table. He spots Steve immediately and waves him over, expression as warm as it ever gets. He’s grateful that the priest won’t expect him to smile so much.

“I’ve ordered coffee for us both,” Father Healy says. “I hope that suits you.”

“Of course, fine,” Steve says, removing his hat.

“How are you, Steven? I’m sorry we don’t speak more often at church.”

“I’m fine.”

Father Healy takes a sip of his coffee. Over the rim, he says, “How are you settling in? Mr. Kirkland says you’re a hard worker. Do you like it there at the office?”

“The office is fine.”

“Do you know any adjectives besides ‘fine’?”

Steve shifts in his seat, but is saved from answering when a waitress approaches to take their order. Once she’s wandered away again, Steve spends a moment with his coffee, adding sugar and a splash of cream. He hasn’t figured out how he prefers it yet, largely because he’d prefer to have a cup of tea, but it’s rare to find somewhere that serves it here.

“Steven.”

“Yes?”

“Have you received any letters from Ireland?”

He glances up from his coffee, eyes narrowed questioningly. “Of course. My mother writes me near daily.”

Father Healy hums quietly and unfolds his napkin to set across his lap. Why is that every conversation with this man feels like some sort of circuitous interrogation? Steve bites his lip, remembering that first conversation in the front room of his house. If he’d only put his foot down then, neither of them would be here right now.

“I miss home,” Steve admits. He’s not sure, at first, that Father Healy can hear him over the babble and clatter in the restaurant. But then the priest reaches over the table to pat Steve’s hand with his own calloused one.

“I know you do, dear boy,” he says as he withdraws his hand. “Forgive me for assuming you’d been adjusting better than I had thought. I hadn’t considered you would have such a hard time.”

“I’m adjusting—”

“Fine, yes, you’ve said.” Father Healy gives Steve a patient look while the waitress lays their food on the table. 

Steve huffs, thumbing at the crust of his turkey sandwich. His other hand drums a slow rhythm against the table. He isn’t sure what’s bothering him more, being found out or the shame of what Father Healy knows about him now. He ought to have been able to do this. The priest himself as good as said he expected more of him.

“I’d like to try and enroll you in a night class, if you don’t mind, Steven.”

Steve’s hands still. “Pardon?”

“There’s a course in art, two or three nights a week, at Brooklyn College. If I can get you in, I can speak with Mr. Kirkland to arrange your work schedule to accommodate.”

Eyebrows raised, Steve sits back in his chair.

“I know the office job isn’t what you wanted,” Father Healy says, “and I think that you might be happier here if you feel that you’re making some kind of progress. Doing something you like.”

He takes up his spoon and begins eating his lunch. Steve picks up his sandwich too, before it goes cold. He can’t taste it very well, though, preoccupied as he is.

“Hasn’t the fall term already started?”

“I’ve already looked into it,” Father Healy says. “You’d be surprised how many strings people will pull for a man of the collar. I’ll drop by their offices this afternoon to speak with admissions. Come to mass this evening and we’ll discuss it after the service.”

Steve frowns and sets his sandwich back down. He finds Father Healy’s sharp eye across the table. “Why are you doing this for me?”

“I’ve told you before that I have an interest in fine art. When first Peggy and then your mother told me about you, I knew I had to see for myself if what they said was true. When I met you, I couldn’t believe you were just—well, I won’t say anything cruel, but I knew that I wanted to do something to help you. That’s all.”

“That’s all?” Steve asks.

“Consider me your patron, Steven,” Father Healy says. “You have something. I don’t know what, just yet, but I aim to find out.”

Then Father Healy shrugs and returns to his soup, as if it really were that simple.

 

Father Healy spots Steve from the pulpit that evening, even as far back as he sits. He isn’t sure what to do with the quiet smile the priest gives him. Does it mean anything? It could be an answer, or perhaps an apology. Steve focuses on his scripture rather than pay the odd swooping in his stomach any mind.

He finds Father Healy in the narthex after service, having dawdled in his pew to give the congregation time to clear out.

“Steven, there you are,” Father Healy says.

Steve raises his brow in question.

“You’ll be pleased, I expect,” the priest continues. “It took a bit of sweet-talking, but I managed to get you into the art course. I’ve settled your fees for the first term, and  _ don’t _ fuss. You can pay it back in time. It will be Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays from seven to ten and Thursdays from seven to nine. You’re to start next Monday.”

“Father Healy, I—” Steve fumbles with his words, the feeling inside him growing brighter.

“No need for that, Steven, no need. Here, I have a list of the books and materials you’ll have to have.”

 

Steve isn’t sure what to expect the following week on his first day of class. The art classes he’d taken back home in Enniscorthy had been anything but interesting, but maybe here it would be different. Brooklyn College itself isn’t new, the placards tell him, but for many of the newly constructed buildings, this fall is the first time classes have been held within them. 

He’s set to take three classes this term: Drawing Fundamentals, Color Theory, and Art History. The first is held in a well-lit studio, then the whole cohort moves across the hall to a standard classroom for the lectures. He adjusts to the timetable easily enough, the long sessions with ten-minute breaks. The curriculum isn’t difficult for him to pick up with, despite having missed the first few weeks. He’d poured over his books before he even began, and while much of the material is familiar, he’s never learned any of it in a formal setting—never sat down and truly considered the principles behind the things he knows intuitively. 

Steve is surprised by the relative diversity of his classmates too. It’s mostly men, but he’s not the only one with a foreign accent, which feels reassuring to him. Even his color theory professor has one, though Steve can’t place it; all he knows is that it isn’t Italian.

During break one day in his first week, he approaches the professor to introduce himself properly.

“Hello, professor, I’m Steve Rogers,” he says and offers his hand.

Professor Calamett shakes with him. “Yes, yes, the office told me we had another.”

“Another… ?”

“Student. What did you think I meant, Mr. Rogers?”

“Oh, I—I’m not sure,” Steve says.

“You’re Irish?” the professor asks, fiddling with his slides as he packs his things away.

“I am.”

“How do you find Brooklyn College?”

“I’m not sure yet,” Steve says, “though I don’t know it’s what I expected.”

Professor Callamet glances up to meet his eye. “This college was founded with immigrants and the working class in mind, Mr. Rogers. You will fit right in, given time.”

And somehow, it seems that he does.

Each weeknight he returns to campus and trudges up the steps to the studio room, he feels his blood flow a little more easily, a little warmer. He learns, and he practices and improves and does it all alongside fellow artists. He’s not even the best in the class, which he likes, because it means he has something to aspire to. He burns through the reams of paper that had once been collecting dust on his kitchen table. Mostly he draws Ireland, etching his memories onto the paper so he’ll never lose them. Sometimes he draws Brooklyn too.

Best of all, perhaps, is that he finally has something worth writing home about.

 

The weather grows colder as the term progresses. There’s a sharp chill in the air now, so that each time Steve leaves his building, he must wrap a scarf around his face to keep his nose from turning tomato-red by the time he arrives wherever it is he’s headed. Even inside his rooms, he keeps the range lit whenever he can and scooches his chair close to hunch over his homework in his lap. It’s not particularly good for his back, but neither is the cold; he makes do.

The last week in November, he comes down with what he thinks is a terrible cold. He manages to haul himself to work that first morning, but by midday, Mr. Kirkland has had enough of his violent coughing. 

“Steve, you ought to go home and get some rest,” Mr. Kirkland says, careful to keep his hands away from Steve’s desk.

“I’m fine, Mr. Kirkland, really—” Then he sneezes all over his files.

“Really, Steve, you’re doing more harm than good. Come back when you can sit up straight again. Johnny can take up your work in the meantime.”

It makes him feel dispensable to take time off, but he truly doesn’t feel well. He makes it home and to his bed, where he collapses for most of the afternoon. When the clock chimes six o’clock, he wakes with a splutter and hurries to find his socks. He’d hoped the sleep would help him enough to be able to attend class tonight, but on the subway ride across Brooklyn, he realizes that he feels worse, in fact. Perhaps it’s more than a cold, but he doesn’t have the spare money for a doctor’s visit. He can hardly afford even his epinephrine, and he’s been saving money for Christmas besides.

He gets himself to campus and into the studio classroom, but rather than take his usual seat toward the front, he picks an easel in the back. 

“Whatcha doing all the way in the nosebleeds, Steve?” asks Steve’s classmate Arnie Roth, pausing by Steve’s stool where he’s hunched over like a ragdoll. “Oh, look at you!”

Steve would rather not.

“Hey, how about you head home, yeah?” Arnie says.

Steve shakes his head, gesturing toward the easel and his books with a weak hand. Arnie lays a hand against Steve’s forehead.

“You’re burning up!” Steve swats at Arnie’s hand and nearly tumbles off his stool. “Please go home. I’ll bring you my notes tomorrow if it matters to you so much.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, Steve, what’re friends for?”

Steve manages a smile. “Thanks, Arnie.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow. You’re in Brooklyn Heights, right?”

Arnie drops by each day around lunchtime to let Steve copy his notes till he’s well again. No one else has ever really been to his tenement, except for Father Healy. He hadn’t realized that until someone else was there. Arnie comments on his crown molding and scribbles at half-completed drawings for his term portfolio while Steve smears and sniffles his way through note transcription.

It’s a disheartening way to end the semester, but Steve takes his downtime to study properly. He and Arnie study together some too, quizzing each other on complementary colors and the Greco-Roman influences in contemporary American art. 

By Friday morning, Steve is feeling considerably better. He had worried it would devolve into pneumonia again, but it seems he’s been spared of that much. His fever’s broken and he can breathe through his nose again, even if he still shambles around his rooms like he’s made of tin.

“Oh, I meant to ask, how was your Thanksgiving?” Arnie asks while Steve shuffles through his Thursday pages.

“My ...?”

“Do they not have Thanksgiving in Ireland?”

Steve shrugs. “No.”

“Well, you’re missing out.” Arnie goes on to describe his family’s meal of ham and potatoes, fresh rolls, cranberry sauce—and Steve feels his stomach growl for the first time in days.

“Say, after our exams, how about we go out to celebrate?” Arnie asks.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Steve hedges. Where would they go?

“C’mon, Steve, we’ll just go have a drink or two. We’ll deserve it after Calamett’s exam.” Arnie tips him a sly grin. “What do you say?”

“I say,” Steve starts, then cracks a smile. “Fine.”

 

Steve’s mind is still buzzing with exam questions when he pushes his way through a crowded bar behind his classmates a week later. All that studying while he’d been too ill to do much else had paid off—or at least, Steve felt confident that it had. None of them would know how well they had done till they got their reports the following week. Steve had hardly stumbled over a single question, though, and he knew the portfolio he’d turned in for his drawing class contained some of the best work he’d ever done. It was all over but the waiting.

Arnie is less sure about himself, despite having roped several of their classmates into coming out to celebrate. On the subway ride into the northern part of the borough, he’d wanted to go over nearly every question, much to the group’s dismay.

“Oh, Arnie,” Therese had groused and smacked his knee. 

“Give yourself some credit,” Steve had told him. “You know all the answers.”

“Sure, I know them  _ now, _ when the exam isn’t in front of me!” 

Arnie may need that drink more than any of them.

Steve and Therese descend like vultures to claim an empty table in a corner while the others fetch a round. By the time Arnie wends his way through the thick crowd, two beers in hand, Steve’s mood has soured slightly. He wishes they’d found somewhere quieter, but Arnie swears by this place, and Steve didn’t know of any other to suggest.

“Forgot to ask what you like,” Arnie says as he sets the bottles down and scooches his chair in to make room. Louis drags an extra over for himself while Lydia passes Therese a drink.

“This’ll do just fine, thank you.” Steve lifts his bottle to drink, but Arnie catches his wrist before he does.

“Hang on, Steve! We have to make a toast!”

“Yeah, speech!” Therese shouts.

“Did you sneak one already while you were by the bar?” Steve mutters to Arnie.

Arnie gives him a peevish look and waves a hand at him expectantly. Steve feels foolish, making a speech in a bar so loud he has to shout to be heard to people he hardly knows—but if it’s all the repayment Arnie asks for last week, it’s the least he can do.

“Here’s to one term down,” Steve says, smiling despite himself. “To art, both past and future, others and our own. May we make more of it.”

The other four give a wordless cheer of assent, sloshing their drinks as they reach across the table to clink glasses. Steve takes a slow sip of his. The bubble of carbonation as it slides down his throat is a familiar buoy. As the group descends into conversation, the crowd starts to seem less suffocating. Holiday decorations festoon the bar. It’s cheerful, now that he looks at it.

Arnie spots him peering at the lights strung along the frame of the back exit. “Say, Steve, you have any holiday plans?”

“Not really.” Steve shrugs, downing the last of his beer.

“Oh, right.”

Steve glances at Arnie to see him chewing his lip like he thinks he’s said something wrong. Rather than linger on it, Steve reaches for Arnie’s bottle, empty as his own.

“Another round?”

“Sure,” Arnie says with a grateful smile.

Steve slides from his chair and starts to make his way toward the bar. The crowd’s thinned out somewhat since they first arrived; perhaps people are leaving for restaurants or dancehalls, the bar only a stop along the way. They all ought to go get dinner somewhere, now that Steve thinks of it. He had been too nervous about the exams to eat much lunch, and now the alcohol is hitting him harder than he’d like it to. Maybe the bar serves food too. He’ll ask, soon as he manages to flag a bartender down.

A burly man jostles him away from the bar, either oblivious or just that determined. Steve’s hip collides with an empty stool and nearly upends it. He catches the stool in time, but his temper is another story.

“That was rude,” Steve calls. “You should wait your turn like the rest of us.”

The man glances over his shoulder at Steve and gives a perfunctory eye roll. “How about you stop babbling and go back to Ireland where you belong, hey, mick? That’s a nice boy.”

Steve’s hands curl into fists at his side. “I have as much a right to be here as anyone else.”

“You’re still here?” The man whirls on him, looming tall and broad over Steve. The joking look has slipped off his face.

“I am, and nothing you say’s likely to change that.”

“That so?” The man’s eyes flicker down to Steve’s tight fists. “Get out of here.”

“You’ll have to make me.”

“Since you’re asking.”

Before Steve has a chance to respond, the man grabs him by the shirt collar and starts dragging him toward the back exit. He digs his heels in, but the floor’s too slick; it’s walk or fall. He kicks up as much of a fight as he can, but the man forces him through the door and into the back alley anyway. Steve catches a last glimpse of the holiday lights before the door snaps shut and a fist collides with his face.

He stumbles backward but manages to stay on his feet. The man releases Steve’s shirt and swings again, but this time Steve blocks his hit with a forearm. He throws a punch of his own, his fist slamming into the man’s jaw. He’s not quick enough to block again: the man slugs him in the nose. Steve hears a soft  _ crunch _ and now he’s seeing a new set of lights, his head spinning as he tumbles backward.

As he catches his fall with his hands, the back door creaks open, pouring light into the alley for an instant. There’s a shout and the sound of a scuffle, but Steve’s too busy trying to staunch the flow of blood from his nose to pay much attention.

“Geez, fine, you can have him! I’m going!”

“Learn some manners while you’re at it!”

Steve’s eyes are still swimming with stars when someone crouches in front of him. A hand reaches for his face and he swipes at it, nails biting into skin.

“Christ, hey, I’m trying to help you here,” a new voice says. Steve blinks at the source and realizes this isn’t the same man who’d drug him out into the alley in the first place.

“I don’t need your help,” Steve says. He wipes his nose delicately on his sleeve, and the fabric comes away bloody.

“Let me check if it’s broken at least.”

Steve glares.

The man scowls right back. “Please.”

Steve sighs and falls still, acquiescent as he can manage. The man’s face scrunches as he leans in close enough to see Steve’s face in the low light. His gentle hand feels Steve’s nose for a break. Steve winces, hissing between his teeth, and the man huffs a quiet apology. At least Steve’s had the beer, though he’s not sure the combination of alcohol and pain isn’t making him delusional. He watches, strangely rapt, as the man’s teeth dig into his bottom lip. His breath smells faintly of whisky, and something else—a fresh scent, like spearmint. 

“I don’t think it’s broken, but I can’t quite tell,” the man says.

“Then what help are you?”

“Hey now, I—”

“Steve!”

Light floods the alleyway again, and Steve glances up to see Arnie barreling out through the backdoor, looking frantic. The man glances between the two of them, his brow furrowing.

“You know this guy?” the man asks, sitting back on his heels.

“Better than I know you,” Steve says. “Hi, Arnie.”

“What happened? You disappeared from the bar so I said I’d stick my head out to see if you were just catching some air—”

“Your friend here got himself punched,” the man supplies.

Arnie helps Steve to his feet, raving over the blood spattered on his shirt, but it’s nothing Steve doesn’t know how to deal with. 

“Thanks again for the help,” Steve says to the man and grabs Arnie by the elbow to drag him toward the door. He yanks it open to find Therese and Lydia headed toward them across the bar.

As the door swings shut on the alley, Steve hears, “You never thanked me in the first place!”

The women usher him back toward the table while Arnie darts to the bar for ice. Louis determines that his nose isn’t, in fact, broken, but Steve expects he’ll be colored with bruises within the hour anyway.

“You look awful, Steve,” Lydia tells him sweetly. “Have another drink.”

They end the night an hour later with a rallying rendition of “Danny Boy” while Steve looks on tight-lipped but warm. He glances around the bar, half-hoping he might spot the man from the alley, but there’s no sign of him—though, frankly, Steve’s not sure he’d recognize him if he did see him. Maybe he ought to have been kinder to him. He had only been trying to help.

Steve wakes up with a killer of a headache the next morning.

 

The church hosts a Christmas dinner every year, Father Healy tells Steve, for those who are unable to have their own for whatever reason. At first, Steve thinks this is Father Healy’s way of inviting him; he both bristles and aches at the pity he neither wants nor needs. As it turns out, however, Father Healy only wants Steve to come along to help with the cooking and cleaning afterward, if he’s free and willing. 

Steve agrees. Arnie would be headed upstate to see his family, he’d told Steve, and Steve didn’t feel he knew any of the others well enough to accept their invitations. If he can’t be home for the holiday, he can at least be helpful, he tells himself.

A coworker cajoles Steve into going shopping with him after work one evening that week. “I gotta get a present for my girl and I need an honest opinion,” Johnny tells him. 

Steve’s not sure when or how he earned that reputation around the office, but he agrees to go. He’s been neglecting his shopping too, but he’d been saving to make sure he could afford something nice for his mother. There’s little time left to make sure it arrives back in Ireland before Christmas has passed.

They go to Bartocci’s on Fulton Avenue, where he helps Johnny pick out a nice jumper for his girlfriend. Apparently Johnny is colorblind in addition to having no earthly sense about what a woman would like for a present. Steve selects a similar jumper for his mother in a rich shade of purple, a color she’d never choose for herself but that Steve thinks would look nice with her hair.

As he’s scanning the store to make sure there’s nothing he’s missed, he spots the makeup counter toward the back. He drifts that way, Johnny wandering along behind him. A salesgirl is helping a woman select a shade of rouge.

Steve leans toward the display cabinet, where a long line of lipsticks are arranged in color families.

“You got a girl back home?” Johnny asks.

Steve shakes his head, peering at a particularly vivid red. 

“A sister or something?”

“No, just a good friend,” Steve says, meeting the salesgirl’s eye with a smile.

 

He pulls his hat down low over his head before stepping outside. In the early morning light, the sky looks milky white. There’s a fine, undisturbed layer of snow on the pavement. As he heads west toward the church, Steve wonders how much longer it will remain so pristine—longer than a standard morning, surely, what with it being Christmas day. Not everyone in this neighborhood is Christian, but certainly there are enough to slow the usual hubbub.

His walk is quiet, his breath puffing in little clouds as he walks. His mother will already be awake, well into her day by now. He checks his watch; if it’s eight o’clock here then it’s one there. If he were in Enniscorthy still, they would be home from church, settling down to a Christmas dinner just the two of them. He hadn’t thought to ask what her plans would be this year, with him gone. Maybe the Carters or one of her fellow nurses had invited her to join them. Peggy would be home, since passage from England isn’t nearly so difficult. Maybe they would open his gifts to them together.

He’ll ask, when he writes next. He only hopes she isn’t alone today.

The church kitchens are already bustling by the time Father Healy escorts him inside. Two older women set him to peeling vegetables while they see to everything else. They have it planned down to the minute, with turkeys and hams starting to be delivered at half past eleven, well after the Christmas mass would be over. Steve had been to the midnight service himself, so he doesn’t care to spend the morning minding pots of soup and opening bottles of stout.

“How many will come?” Steve asks one of the women, Mrs. Keeney.

“Oh, many, many,” Mrs. Keeney says. “It’s proper Irish food we’re cooking, roasted potatoes and stuffing and boiled sprouts, you know. That and the company draws them in.”

“Is it mostly men?”

“Mostly, yes. They’re all very nice, like you, dear.”

“Haven’t they anywhere else to be?”

Mrs. Keeney blinks at him. “No, Steve, they haven’t anywhere else. That’s why we’re here, so that they have anywhere at all.”

The congregation begins trickling into the hall around ten. There are sweets for the children and paper hats for everyone milling about and visiting with one another. Steve hardly notices the unfamiliar faces till the visitors start to disperse and head home for the day. Then he sees them, the men, sitting either alone or huddled in small groups. They cling to their wool caps and bottles of stout, waiting patiently till their Christmas dinner is ready to be served.

He, the women, and Father Healy serve them in small groups. Steve stands behind a table doling out generous helpings of potatoes for nearly two straight hours till every plate has been filled as many times as it takes to fill the man who holds it. They look worn, most of them, and some have an odd smell that overpowers the strong scent of rosemary wafting up from the potatoes. A few give Steve strange looks, but most of them smile or joke about his paper hat as they shuffle along the line.

Eventually they stop getting up for second helpings, and it’s only when he takes a moment to stand back and look that Steve realizes just how many have gathered here today. They fill every seat of the parish hall’s long wooden tables.

Father Healy finds him standing at the hall’s edge. “We’ll have our own dinner now, Steven. Come along.”

“Don’t we need to serve the trifle?” Steve asks.

“It can wait,” Father Healy says, motioning for Steve to follow him toward the kitchen. “We’ll stretch the day out that way.”

“Will they stay here all day?”

“Yes, and many well into the night. We have some beds made out for those too under the weather to leave.”

Steve eyes him sideways. “‘Under the weather’?”

“It’s Christmas, and we’re always polite on Christmas. Yes, under the weather.”

He and Father Healy sit down to dinner with Mrs. Keeney and her sister Miss Lyle. The turkey’s gone a bit dry by now, but the stuffing tastes remarkably like his mother’s, so much so that he asks Mrs. Keeney where she and her sister are from. They’re from Arklow, they tell him, which Steve supposes is too far for it to really  _ be _ his mother’s recipe. He compliments it all the same and takes a second portion.

It’s well into the afternoon by the time they serve the trifle. The hall has gotten louder, the men loosening their stiff posture of the morning, whether from the holiday or the stout. Steve smiles to hear them laughing and carrying on while he helps Mrs. Keeney and Miss Lyle clear away the serving dishes and plates.

Father Healy passes him a glass of sherry when next Steve re-emerges from the kitchen. “Here you go, Steven.”

“Thank you.”

“Come, let’s sit.”

They and the women join one of the long tables, where Steve notices a few of the men have taken out fiddles and accordions. One of the men stands and doffs his cap, giving the four of them a polite nod.

“We’d like to thank you for this Christmas you’ve given all of us,” he says. “We appreciate all your hard work.”

A round of applause echoes around the hall.

“Now,” the man continues, “we’ll show our gratitude with a bit of music, if it please you.”

He brings forth another man from the crowd who sets his hat over his heart. After a quiet note from a pitch pipe, the man opens his mouth and begins to sing in Irish. Steve has never heard the song before and can hardly understand the words for the man’s accent, but it tugs at something in his chest and sets it tumbling loose. He would look away if he could, duck his head to hide the tears that spring up suddenly at the corners of his eyes, but he finds himself arrested. The man’s rich voice fills the whole hall, not a single other sound in the room to disturb his melody. For all the man looks nothing like his father, Steve can’t help but think of that photograph atop his dresser.

When the song is done, there’s a long moment of quiet. Steve wipes at his eyes with his shirtsleeve. Beside him, Father Healy removes his glasses to dab at his own tears as well.

The men with instruments start playing a reel then, and Steve finds the juxtaposition jarring enough to rid him of most of the disquietude.

“Thank you for all your help today, Steven,” Father Healy says. “We’re glad to have you.”

“Of course.” Steve’s mouth pinches with thought.

“Something on your mind?”

“It’s only, I wondered—why don’t they go home?”

“Home?” Father Healy asks. “Do you mean Ireland?”

Steve nods.

“These are the men who built this city, Steven, its tunnels and bridges and buildings. They came here for the very same reasons you did.”

“But …” Steve says, not quite sure what he’s asking. It seems a paltry lot, that the place they helped shape would give these men so little in return.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Father Healy says, eyes sharp in that way of his that’s never any less unsettling for its growing familiarity. “But there’s nothing at all left for them in Ireland, not really. At least here, we can give them a warm meal and somewhere to be.”

“Isn’t there anything else we can do for them?”

“We’re doing as much as our means allow, I promise you.”

“It just doesn’t seem right to me.”

“I know. I know, nor to me.”

Steve feels at that moment, for the first time since his arrival, like he might be lucky in some small way.


	3. Chapter 3

January only grows colder as the new year stretches out before him. The new term begins after the last of the holiday cheer has dissipated in favor of wintry haze. Steve’s nose is nearly always stopped up nowadays, and the constant chill bothers his lungs and gives him a lingering, hacking cough. Even inside where he’s lined his windows as best he could to help the draft, it’s frigid. His mother had sent him a pair of fleece-lined gloves for Christmas that he rarely takes off unless he’s huddled by his range.

He takes to arriving at work an hour early most mornings to complete his homework and read the paper without his hands aching from the temperatures. Mr. Kirkland doesn’t mind and often lets him in himself. The office and Brooklyn College’s heated halls are two of the few places he can get warm anymore.

This term he has a figure drawing class, and he doesn’t envy their poor subjects those first few weeks. The college has central heating, but even then, he’s chilled enough in a thick cardigan; he can’t imagine lying nude for an hour. His hands get too stiff to use a pencil some evenings, even when they aren’t bruised from whatever back alley scrap he’d landed himself in this week, as he’s devolved into doing again.

It’s an informative class. Where Professor Calamett’s thoroughness had proved difficult in his art history course, Steve finds it incredibly effective here. He’s drawn people, of course, but had never had the chance to properly study the human form before now. He’s not as accustomed to drawing men either, since usually his mother and Peggy were the only ones who would sit still long enough for him to do a proper study.

He lingers over the male models when they have them, learning the way a man’s body flows, waist to hip to thigh; mimicking its paths with methodical, thorough strokes of his pencil. The jutting lines fascinate him so much that he pours over his in-class sketches at home, perfecting them, so engrossed he even dreams about them. He wakes up feeling strange and flushed—and harder than a rock more mornings than not. He chalks it up to the winter; it’s been too cold for him to bother with that lately, and his body must be getting frustrated. Anything that excites him is likely to arouse him too, these days. He deals with it best as he can manage with cold fingers.

He feels settled enough, now that the holidays have passed. He’s been gone from Enniscorthy for so long that Brooklyn Heights has started to feel, if not like home, then at least somewhere he can be comfortable. He never has need of a map anymore. His grocer recognizes him; knows he’d rather have the bruised produce for the discount than the fresh stuff. The man at the newstand knows that on Tuesdays he likes a new pack of spearmint gum with his paper. There’s routine and familiarity to his days now, if nothing else.

Arnie thinks he ought to get out more, says it would be good for him _as an artist, Steve, you gotta._ He does go out with his classmates some nights, though why Arnie wants him there, he has no idea. It’s not as if he brings a lot of cheer to a conversation, if he can make it through one without turning it into an argument.

Lydia likes him despite, Arnie says, and would say yes if Steve were to ask her to dinner. It’s only that he’s too busy, Steve tells him, what with work and his courses, otherwise he might. Lydia’s a fine woman, if a bit saccharine, but truthfully Steve never knows what to say to her.

He writes to Peggy about the situation, if it can be called that at all. She writes back, _Maybe your friend is right. Did you really hate dancing so much that you won’t go with anyone but me? That’s a shame. You’re better than the credit you give yourself._

When Father Healy announces in February that the church, in conjunction with another nearby, will begin hosting weekly dances for young people in the parish hall, Steve resigns himself to going. It’s a favor to Father Healy, who would expect him to attend, as much as anything else. He’ll invite Arnie and tell Peggy about it in his next letter. Then maybe the both of them will get off his back about it.

 

The first dance is on a frosty Saturday night. It’s not snowing, thankfully, as Steve walks from his building to the church, though the paper had said it was supposed to. He would rather not walk home in slush, since he’d worn his nice pair of shoes tonight. He would rather not go at all, truth be told, especially now that Arnie had backed out on him after remembering today was his grandmother’s birthday. Steve might have just stayed home, if he hadn’t already told Father Healy he would be there. He’ll make an appearance to keep his word before calling it an early night.

When he arrives inside the hall, he double checks his watch to be sure he hadn’t gotten the time mixed up. He’s right on time, though—eight on the dot. It’s just that the hall is nearly empty, only a few attendees lingering along the walls while the band squeaks out a tune.

Steve sighs and casts his eyes toward the ceiling. This will be a waste of time, and a waste of effort on Father Healy’s part. He’ll stay long enough for a lemonade and then duck out, with the excuse of homework if the priest spots him. It’s not precisely a lie, either; he’d planned on cracking open his textbooks tonight anyway.

There’s a refreshment table set up along the sidewall where a woman Steve recognizes from mass pours Steve something to drink. He thanks her and finds a chair to sit where he’ll wait this out. Damn Arnie. Steve is half-inclined to believe he knew how awful this would be and made up the excuse about his grandmother. Now that it’s on his mind, Steve thinks he remembers Arnie mentioning his grandmother had died some years ago ...

Emptying his cup, Steve glances up with a start to realize a genuine crowd has formed in the hall. He’d been too preoccupied with his own thoughts to bother looking up from the floor. The band has found a song it actually knows how to play, and many people are dancing. The clatter of shoes and whirl of dresses makes him think, for an instant, that he’s back in the Athenaeum. Perhaps Peggy’s just run to the washroom, and will expect him to have another drink for her when she returns. Aileen might catch his eye across the room and giggle behind her hand.

The ache in his chest is so sudden and profound he nearly drops his cup. It seems that, every time he thinks he might be past it now, the feeling finds him again in the most unexpected moments. He supposes it’s never truly gone away, but rather he learned to live with it, just as Peggy had told him he would.

He’ll have another lemonade then, and stay just a while longer. His textbooks will wait.

He’s just returning to his spot, drink in hand, when he realizes someone else has taken up his seat. Irritated at having been disturbed even unintentionally, Steve grumbles under his breath and takes one near to it instead. He sips his lemonade and scans the crowd. There are some familiar faces from his own congregation here and there, but for the most part he doesn’t know anyone. He wonders if Father Healy really had taken out that advertisement in the paper.

“You seem like you’re having fun,” a voice says from beside him.

Steve doesn’t spare a glance for the man who’d stolen his chair. “Barrels,” he says flatly.

“What, don’t like dancing?”

“I like it fine.”

“Oh, so you _can’t_ dance. Got it.”

Steve twists in his chair to answer, but when he sees the man, his jaw simply drops open. He stares, fishmouth, as the unfortunately familiar man’s eyes light up with silent amusement.

“Glad to see your nose made it after all.”

Not so silent, then. Steve huffs and pivots back to face the crowd. “That it did.”

“I guess I shouldn’t expect another thank you for that, since you barely got one out at the time.”

“No, you shouldn’t.”

The man laughs now, muted, and settles back into his chair. Hopefully he’ll stay over there; Steve would rather not be reminded of that night in the alley. He supposes he’s grateful the man had helped him now that he has the perspective of distance, but at the time, he’d wanted nothing more than to disappear into the pavement. He would have been _fine,_ just as he has been in every altercation he’s gotten into before or since. That November night had opened something like a floodgate in him; he seems to have forgotten how to let things slide by without challenge. Another thing he can’t tell his mother.

“It’s a shame, what with it being Valentine’s Day this week, that you’re not dancing,” the man says.

“You’re not dancing either,” Steve says.

“I’m taking a break. Don’t wanna work up too much of a sweat.”

“Sure.”

“I’ll get back out there in a minute.”

Steve glances at him out of the corner of his eye. He’s got this bright-eyed look about him, his shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow and his lips wet with lemonade. It’s a wonder Steve hadn’t noticed him on the dancefloor already; he certainly has the look of someone who draws attention to himself.

“I can dance, by the way,” Steve says, strangely determined to make sure this man knows that, for whatever reason.

“Is that so?”

“It is.” Never mind that he’s not particularly good at it, but he _can_ muddle through the steps with something that could almost be grace, if you squinted after having three drinks.

“Well, let’s see then.”

“What, right now?”

“Sure.”

“I don’t have to prove myself to you.”

“I’m not asking you to. I just want you to have some fun—hey, what’s your name anyway?”

With a sigh, Steve faces him again. “Steve Rogers.”

“Bucky Barnes,” the man says and holds out his hand. Steve takes it, remembering with shocking clarity what it felt like to have those fingertips gingerly touch his face. He withdraws his hand quick as is polite while Bucky smiles at him.

“Look, Rogers, if the problem is you don’t want to ask anyone—”

“I’m perfectly capable—”

“—then I’ve got a couple sisters who’d love to dance with you. Becca’s got a boyfriend who’s here but he’d let you cut in. Jan’s free though—look, there they are.” Steve follows Bucky’s gesture to where two young women and a man stand across the hall from them. The man has his arm around the one with dark hair. The other, Jan, spots Bucky pointing and waves, tucking her honey wheat curls behind one ear.

“See? Janet’s a sweetie.”

“Why are you trying to set me up with your sisters?”

“Who said anything about setting up? I’m just asking you to dance.”

Bucky grins, too much teeth. Steve frowns and takes a sip of his lemonade.

“I’ll pass.”

“My sisters not good enough for you, Rogers?”

Steve rolls his eyes. “You’re getting on my nerves, Barnes.”

Bucky holds up his hands in mock surrender. “Fine, fine, I’ll leave you to it. See you around, Steve.”

He’s gone by the end of his sentence, disappearing back into the crowd. Steve sits, quietly fuming, while he finishes his drink. On his way out of the hall, he spots Bucky spinning a blonde around the dancefloor like she weighs little more than a feather. It’s possible he’s making things up, too much sugar in his system—but for a moment, he locks eyes with Bucky, before the man spins away again with the blonde in his arms.

The color of his eyes reminds Steve of the hills surrounding Enniscorthy: that same rich summer green, familiar as breathing.

 

He doesn’t mean to go back the next week. In fact, he means to stay home and work on a drawing for his figure class he’s supposed to turn in the following Monday. It’s only that, when his hand starts to cramp from overuse, he decides to take a walk. Naturally, his feet carry him toward the church, a place they’re only too familiar with taking him to.

The clock high on the wall tells him it’s nearly nine by the time he makes it inside. The dance is in full swing, busier than it was last week. News must have spread, which is good, Steve thinks. It will make Father Healy happy to have the hall this full. He doesn’t fetch a lemonade this time, doesn’t even sit down; instead he just stands along the edge of the crowd like one of the girls in their confectionary dresses, who wait to be asked to dance. A few do cast their eyes toward him as if he might offer, but they glance away quickly at the frown he can’t seem to erase. That or his threadbare jacket—but he’d prefer to think it’s because of the frown.

The dancefloor is littered with faces both familiar and unfamiliar, but there’s one in particular Steve is watching for. It’s a large part of the reason he’d returned, he knows, having thought of his face all week as if it were some scab he couldn’t stop thumbing at, no matter how much he knew that picking would only make it worse. Steve’s not entirely sure what his goal is by finding him, what he would do or how he would react, much the same as there’s no real point to ripping loose a scab. The satisfaction of having done it, maybe.

In the end, it’s Bucky who finds him instead.

He’s about to leave, having realized how ridiculous he’s acting and angry at himself for it, when a hand grasps his shoulder. He shakes it loose, whirling to face whoever had touched him, only to find those summer green eyes staring into his. Seeing the color again makes him remember why he had wanted to. In the middle of winter, he sees so little green.

It’s a comfort; it makes him ache. He had thought Bucky wasn’t here at all tonight.

“You’re back,” Bucky says, like it’s surprising.

Steve shrugs, tearing his eyes away. It’s as much of a surprise to him as it must be to Bucky.

“Good.” Bucky ducks his head to meet Steve’s eye. “Hey, dance with Jan, will you?”

“Why?”

“Because nobody’s asked her tonight and she deserves better than feeling lonely.”

Steve’s hands curl and uncurl at his sides, but he can’t place the strange feeling in his gut.

Bucky just smiles at him, imploring. ”One dance won’t kill you, Rogers.”

He debates for a moment, but Steve already knows how he’ll answer. When he nods, Bucky grins impossibly wide. “Come on, I’ll introduce you,” he says, tossing an arm around Steve’s shoulder like it’s the most casual thing in the world. He guides him across the dancefloor in search of Janet just like that, his fingertips absently catching at the lapel of Steve’s jacket.

“Jan,” Bucky calls, and Steve takes his distraction to duck out from under his arm. The same girl from last week spins to face them, lemonade in hand and a smile on her face. She looks all of 15 years old. “This is Steve Rogers. He’d like to dance with you.”

“That so, Steve?”

“Sure,” Steve says.

“Okay.” Jan passes her drink off to Bucky and takes Steve’s hand.

He follows her onto the dancefloor too, to where she pauses in the middle and turns to face him. The band is playing something right now that he can actually keep time to. Gingerly, Steve places his hands on her waist. She loops her arms around his shoulders, keeping a respectable distance between their bodies—it is a church dance, after all. Steve does his best not to look at his feet as he starts a deliberate rotation around the floor, _one-two-three one-two-three._ It’s no lindy hop, but Janet doesn’t seem bothered at all.

She does have a sweet smile, Steve thinks, when he looks at her. It’s nothing like Bucky’s, and in fact she reminds him a bit of Aileen, though the two look nothing alike. She hardly looks like Bucky either, frankly, except for the nose and perhaps her chin. The set of her shoulders.

“So you’re Bucky’s friend?” she asks.

“Oh, um—” His friend?

“None of his other friends will come to this dance. I’m glad you’re here, so I don’t feel so bad about him having to come.”

“I’m sure he doesn’t mind.”

“No, he doesn’t, but still, it’s sweet of you.”

“Thanks,” Steve says, then falls silent for the rest of the dance. When the song ends, Steve fiddles with his hands at her waist. Jan titters a laugh and pats his shoulder before withdrawing her hands. Steve drops his too, much too quick to be polite, but her smile doesn’t waver.

“Thank you for the dance, Steve,” she says and then, just like her brother did to him last week, disappears into the crowd. Steve wonders if that’s a family trait, or if it’s just his eyes getting weaker, unable to track the movement. Perhaps he ought to invest in a pair of glasses.

To escape from the activity of the hall for a moment, Steve heads toward the washroom, though he has no need of it. It’s empty, thankfully, so he takes his time washing his hands in the sink with warm water and soap. When he’s dried his hands on a towel, he turns toward the mirror over the basin and meets his own eye. He is surprised to find that he looks precisely as he did when he last looked at himself, earlier in the afternoon in his floor’s shared washroom. He’s not sure why, but he expected something to have changed.

The door swings open with a squeal of rusty hinges.

“I was just leaving,” Steve says quickly, checking his shirt is tucked before ducking toward the door.

“You don’t have to,” Bucky says.

Steve looks up sharply to find him blocking the door anyway. Bucky sees his eyes flicker toward it, and he quickly steps out of the way, as if to make it clear he’s not barring Steve from leaving if he really wants to. It’s only that he needn’t hurry on Bucky’s account, apparently.

The pipes rattle as someone in the women’s room flushes the commode. Steve bites his lips, setting his hands on his hips while the silence stretches on too long to be comfortable. He’s sure Bucky is waiting for him to say something, comment about Jan maybe, or something else. All he can think of, though, is how anticlimactic it feels to be suddenly alone with the object of his strange, week-long fascination. He wasn’t sure what he had expected, what he wanted this moment to look like, but for it to happen in a church bathroom of all places certainly wasn’t it.

“Are you having a nice time?” he blurts out, to distract from the way his cheeks have lit up pink with confused guilt.

“Sure,” Bucky says, half a laugh. “Are you?”

“Sure.”

“Hey, Steve, what part of Ireland are you from?”

“Enniscorthy, in County Wexford.”

“That’s in the east, right?”

“It is.”

“How long have you been in Brooklyn?”

“Five months.”

Bucky whistles, quiet and low, and mirrors Steve’s hands-on-hips posture. “Do you miss home much?”

Steve fidgets, unsure what to say. He supposes it’s a simple enough question, one that anyone might ask, but the answer feels too revealing some days. Bucky is a relative stranger. He has no reason to want to share with him.

Steve meets his gaze and says, “Every day.”

Bucky nods thoughtfully, like he had expected as much. “I can only imagine. I think I’d miss my family too much.”

“Yeah.”

The washroom falls silent then, both of them having run out of things to say. Steve knows it’s time for them to leave now, since apparently Bucky doesn’t even need to wash his hands and Steve had come in for no good reason either. But he can’t seem to bring himself to walk out, with the way Bucky’s watching him. The air feels strange, almost tense, a bubble he doesn’t want to burst by saying or doing something as stupid as leaving.

Bucky clears his throat, striding toward the sink and cutting on the faucet. He splashes water against his cheeks and neck like he’s overheated, though Steve hadn’t noticed that he’d been sweating at all. The faucet squeaks as he turns the knob again.

“Listen, Steve.” Bucky spins to face him with one hand still gripping the basin tight. “I’m meeting a few friends after I walk Becca and Janet back home. Come out with us.”

“Did you follow me into the washroom to ask me that?”

“I—” Bucky starts, then breaks off to rub at his neck. “Yeah, maybe, but you’re the one that ran away in the first place.”

Steve wonders if the twisting in his gut has anything to do with Janet referring to Steve as her brother’s friend. How had he framed the story of their first meeting and subsequent reunion last Saturday? It should strike him as strange, that Bucky might have referred to him as a friend when they’ve spoken so few times. It should; it doesn’t.

“Where are you going?” Steve asks.

“A bar we know.”

“Would I know it?”

“I don’t know, would you?”

“Doubt it.”

Steve hums, thumbing at a button on his jacket. They really ought to leave. Have this conversation out in the open, where it might feel less fraught. Perhaps it’s just him.

“So will you come?”

“I ought to leave,” Steve says, eyeing the door. “Mass in the morning.”

“Oh,” Bucky huffs. “Fine, right. I’ll let you go.”

Unsticking himself from the spot in the room where he’s been standing for five solid minutes now, Steve moves toward the door. Bucky beats him there and reaches for the knob to hold it open for him.

“I’m taking the girls to dinner before next week’s, if you wanted to join.”

Steve pauses to meet his green eyes. “You don’t even know me.”

Bucky sucks in a breath but stays quiet, like he’s not sure if he’s meant to respond to that.

“Why did you help me, that night?” Steve asks.

“I heard what you said at the bar, about you belonging. I guess I didn’t like it so much when that schmuck didn’t believe you.” Something flickers on Bucky’s face, then he continues, “I’m sorry if I offended you somehow. Guess it felt like the right thing to do at the time.”

Steve nods and comes to a decision. “Where’s dinner?”

 

He buys a plant in the middle of the week, somewhere in the shuffle between Brooklyn Heights and Flatbush. It’s some sort of fern, its leafy tendrils spilling over the edges of the little terracotta pot he bought to keep it in. He’d had to dig for change in his coat pockets even after he’d talked the man in the shop down in price.

It’s still February, somehow, and the span between now and spring may as well be an abyss. He’d wanted something green to look at in the meantime. It isn’t quite the shade he was after, but it will do well enough.

When he arrives in class a few minutes late, he carefully sets the pot on the floor next to his desk before pulling out his notebook. Arnie and Louis exchange a look and then burst into laughter, muffled behind their hands. Steve shoots them a glare, rapping pencil against paper before pointing toward their professor.

During break, Arnie hooks the pot with his foot and slides it close enough to pick up. “Make a new friend, Steve?”

“Yes, I have,” Steve says and grabs the pot back from him.

“Fine, fine.” Arnie chuckles. “I get it. Bit of color, liven the place up.”

“Not a bad idea,” Louis says.

“I’ve been known to have good ones now and again,” Steve mutters.

“I know,” Arnie says. “You wanna come out Saturday night? We were thinking of—”

“I have plans.”

“Oh, what, are you going to that church dance again?”

“Yes.”

“Third week in a row? Must be some party.”

“Not that you would know.” Steve cuts him a pointed look.

Arnie ducks his head for a moment but soldiers on. “It really better than coming out with us?”

“I like it enough, and it’s free.”

“See?” Louis says. “Steve’s got better ideas than you and me combined, Arnie.”

When he arrives home that night, Steve flicks on the cracked ceramic lamp on his kitchen table-turned-work desk. He sets the plant under the light and fusses with the pot and the fronds till the fern sits the way he wants it to. He’ll move it closer to the window in the morning to give it some sun, but even by the lamplight, he likes what it does for the room. Green. He’ll draw his mother a picture of it to send along in his next letter. She ought to approve of his purchase.

 

“More water?”

Steve meets his waitress’ eye and nods, passing her his empty glass for the third time. If Bucky hasn’t shown up by the time he’s finished with this one, he’ll leave. He has given him plenty of time to show up, and Steve ought not waste any more of his waitress’ time—or his own, for that matter.

Then again, that’s what he had said to himself the last time she had refilled his glass.

He grabs the laminated menu again, thinking he may have missed something in his first few passes through it. When Bucky and his sisters arrive, at least he’ll know what he would like to eat. His neighbor at the next table over has what Steve thinks is the pastrami on rye. It looks good; maybe he’ll try that.

The clock ticks later, and his fingers drum an irritated beat against his thigh. The pitying pinch in the restaurant staff’s brows starts to deepen, and Steve realizes he’s either dining alone or not at all. When his waitress coasts back toward his table for what is at least the fifth time by now, Steve’s gut twists with uncomfortable anger.

“Sure I can’t get you anything to start, sweetpea?” she asks, a ticket and pen in hand.

“I think I’ll just go, actually,” Steve tells her. He drops his napkin on the table and starts to fish for his wallet, trying to ignore the upset trembling of his fingers. She waves him off with a smile, though.

“Don’t worry about tonight, alright? If she shows, I’ll tell her you’re gone.”

“Thanks,” Steve mutters before pushing his chair back with a scrape. He pelts out the door, gasping for a breath of fresh air once outside and letting it out in a shaky gust. He can’t understand why this has him so worked up, or why he’d bothered waiting so long. It’s ridiculous, he knows, to have sat there drinking glass after glass of water like some poor girl who refused to admit that she’d been stood up. People assumed him a patient person sometimes, but when it came down to it, he was only ever good at feigning it for five minutes at a time.

He takes another breath, then pulls his hat back on for the walk home. At least now he won’t get behind on his studying again.

“Rogers? Hey, Steve!”

Halfway up the block, Steve looks over his shoulder to see someone tearing after him down the pavement. His heart lurches awfully at the sight of him, but he pauses anyway and waits again, because that’s his tune, apparently.

“Hi,” Bucky says once he reaches him, sounding winded. He has the nerve to smile, for some reason, before he notices Steve’s glare, cold as the air around them. His face falls, and there: that’s the shamed expression one ought to wear.

“You were late,” Steve says.

“I know,” Bucky says. “I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

“You said 6:30.” Steve yanks back his sleeve to get a look at his watch, though he knows well what time it is. His hands still shake. “It’s past seven.”

“Rogers—”

“I waited.” He turns on his heel and starts off down the street again. Bucky stumbles after him, grabbing for his shoulder, but Steve jerks out of his grip.

“Steve,” Bucky says, emphatic. “I’m sorry.”

“You could have said seven if you meant seven.”

“I meant the time I told you, only—”

“That was rude of you, to keep me waiting like that.”

“I’m not saying it wasn’t—hey, will you hang on? Where are you going?”

Steve rounds a corner and whirls on him, feeling twice as tall with how angry he is, for not being able to understand it a bit. It shouldn’t matter to him so much that someone he barely knows was late to meet him for dinner. He can’t make heads nor tails of why it does, so he looks Bucky in the face on the off chance it holds some answers for him. Seeing his wide open eyes, the apologetic tilt of his mouth, hardly enlightens him; he’s not sure why he’d thought it would, as if he understood at all why that face continually vexed him like a jigsaw puzzle he couldn’t solve.

“I’m going home,” Steve says.

“Oh, Rogers, c’mon. Just listen to me for a minute, would you?”

“You’ve wasted enough of my time for one night, thanks.”

“Jesus _Christ._ Anyone ever tell you you’re a prickly son of a bitch?”

Steve lets out a hissing breath and keeps walking.

“I’ll take that as a yes, then.”

Bucky keeps pattering along beside him, for God knows what reason. Steve can’t find it in him to tell him to bugger off; probably only God knows the answer to that one, too.

“Are you following me?” Steve asks.

“Yep,” Bucky says.

“Why?”

“Because I want to apologize. Figure I give it a few blocks, you might be tired enough to let me.”

“How’s your endurance?”

Bucky laughs, his breath puffing out in a cloud in the night air. Steve cuts a sideways look at him. Hands shoved in his pockets and a hat pulled low over his dark hair, he does look determined to follow Steve across all five boroughs if he has to. With a start, Steve realizes Bucky isn’t meant to be alone either. His curiosity plays war with the lingering anger. There’s probably a story here, even if it isn’t worth a nickel.

“Let’s hear it then,” Steve says as they pass through a crosswalk.

“What?”

“Your apology. Give it a go.”

“Oh, really? You’ll let me try it?”

“You’re losing points for insincerity already.”

“Rogers,” Bucky says, taking him by the shoulder again to stop him. Steve lets him, this time. “I’m sorry you had to wait so long on me to show up. I know you’re sore. I feel rotten about it, but I promise, it wasn’t on purpose. I wouldn’t do that to you. I won’t do it again. I really am sorry.”

He even doffs his cap, somewhere in the middle of it. Steve rolls his eyes, but he’s losing the fight to a smile when he turns to start walking again.

“How’d I do?” Bucky asks.

“Passable, I guess.”

“There’s an explanation too, if you want to hear it.”

“Does it include where your sisters are?”

“As a matter of fact, it does.” When Bucky pauses, Steve waves him on with one gloved hand. “Becca and Jan both wound up with dates tonight, and then got it in their heads they wanted to go somewhere else for dinner, even though I said, we’re supposed to meet Steve at the deli. I guess I lost track of time arguing with ‘em, and then Rosie’d taken my shoes—”

“Is Rosie your dog?”

“Kid sister, actually, but same difference. I swear I practically ran here once I realized how late I was. I’m really sorry, Steve.”

The story sounds true enough, but Steve’s not inclined to let him completely off the hook so quickly. He’s always been a grudge holder of the highest order, much as his mother had berated him for it. He mulls it over while they keep walking, over whether he even cares enough to forgive Bucky, sincere apology or no—if he cares enough to _not_ forgive him either. It’s a toss up, in the end, and they’ve reached his building besides. He’ll give it some more thought before he decides.

“This is me,” Steve says, gesturing toward the door.

“Oh.” Bucky’s brow furrows as Steve fishes his key free. “Do you not—”

“Do I not what?”

“Did you already eat? Don’t you want to go to the dance?”

“No, and no.”

Bucky’s face falls. “Well, okay then. Are you still mad?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you want to go somewhere else?”

“I’d rather just go do my homework.”

“Your homework? You still in school? Hey, I’m pretty sharp, I could probably help—”

“I doubt that.”

“Why?” Bucky asks, a challenge.

“I’m in an art course at Brooklyn College. You know much about that?”

“Well, no, but I could always model for you.”

And isn’t that a thought: Bucky laid out before him like a mystery to solve. Perhaps if Steve were to put pencil to paper, follow the lines of him, he could figure out the reason he can’t quite turn away from him. Is it in the way his mouth pulls up higher at one corner when he grins that way? If not that, then it may be how he stands, slight cock to his hips, his body as bafflingly at ease in stillness as it is in motion. If he were to draw him, Steve could trace all his muscles and veins till he has fashioned himself a map that could show him what it is.

“You’d hate it,” Steve says.

“How do you know?”

“Goodnight, Bucky.”

Before he can reach the door, Bucky lays a hand on his shoulder again, his grip gentler this time. “Hey,” Bucky says, turning him around. “You really don’t want to come out?”

“I’m tired.”

“Okay, yeah. Listen, though, you ever decide you wanna see me again, I got a shop over on Henry Street.” He smiles softly, an echo of bravado to it. “Has my name on it and everything. Barnes Hardware and Electric, you can’t miss it.”

Steve stands there under the light over his building’s door, struck still. Bucky slowly drops his hand back to his side, but even then, Steve still frowns at him, like if he just stares long enough, he might put it together.

“What?” Bucky asks.

“Why does this matter so much to you?” With his free hand, Steve gestures between them, the motion so minute that for a moment, he’s not sure Bucky noticed.

“I don’t know.” Bucky sounds the most sincere he’s been all evening.

“Yeah,” Steve says, “neither do I. I’ll see you around, Bucky.”

He turns to key into the door and leaves Bucky outside.

 

Steve doesn’t attend the dance the following week either, citing studying when Father Healy asks him about it after mass the next morning. It wasn’t a lie either, though the way the priest had lingered over the shadows under Steve’s eyes indicated Father Healy might not believe him but wasn’t forthright enough to ask in front of other parishioners. He had patted Steve on the shoulder and sent him on his way.

Steve returns home to the results of his evening: crumpled pages strewn across his desk, a small bottle of whisky far too empty, and a half-written letter to his mother he may as well throw out with the rest of the rubbish. Whatever he’d written to her last night is unlikely to be coherent; he’d been on a strange jig, mad with no reasonable cause or outlet for it. It’s as if he’s been asleep for months and, re-emerged from his hibernation den, now finds himself ravenous.

He’d like to ask his mother’s advice, because historically she has always had answers to his questions. She is so far removed from his day-to-day life now, though, that he isn’t sure she would have much to tell him about this.

Whatever _this_ is. Ten scrapped sketches of a face in shadow. He’s had artistic fascinations before; those never put his heart in his throat when the pages didn’t come out how he wanted.

He wishes Bucky had had the answer at the ready—that he could have said something to Steve that would satisfy him enough to let it go. But, like a dog, Steve must continue to shake till he knows or the thing dies in his mouth. He hasn’t had much to hold onto of late; perhaps that’s why his jaw’s latched like this.

When his kitchen lamp flickers and dies in the middle of the week, it’s all he can do not to throw it out the window. He can’t afford a new one, though, and he needs the light to work by in the early dark of the winter evenings. Mrs. Fisher across the hall lends him a new bulb for a quarter, but when he screws it in, the lamp still won’t turn on when he flicks the switch. With a heaving sigh, he drags out the dusty copy of the telephone directory that he’d found in a drawer and flips to the yellow pages. He finds what he’s looking for, listed under a shorter name but in the same place he’d been told. It’s late, but perhaps they’ll still be open. Steve bundles into his coat, yanks the shade off the lamp before tucking it underarm, and heads outside into the dark.

He finds the address easily enough. It’s only a handful of blocks away from his own building, far enough that his cheeks are pink with cold but his toes haven’t frozen yet. Like Bucky had said, a sign over the door reads _Barnes Hardware and Electric._

To Steve, it looks as though the second pair of words had been crammed underneath the first. The paint is flaked and peeling, but the windows beneath the sign are clean as crystal. Through them, the store is dim, but there’s a light on in the back that effuses that space with a yellow glow. Steve checks his watch and realizes with a start that it’s nearly 10 p.m. If he had realized how late it was already, he might not have come.

As it is, he’s already here, and obviously someone is still awake. He shifts the lamp under his arm and knocks on the door with the side of his fist.

He sees a shadow shift, but he has to knock again before anyone emerges from the back room. Obscured as it is by the backlight, Steve can’t identify the figure shuffling up the long aisle. But when he reaches the door and the streetlights, there’s no mistaking that face squinting at him through the glass.

Steve holds up his lamp. “It’s broken,” he mouths.

Bucky rolls his eyes and, shoulders heaving with a sigh, flicks the lock on the door. “I don’t guess you read the sign, but we close at seven,” Bucky says as Steve slides past him into the warmth of the store.

“And yet, you let me in.”

“And yet.” Bucky locks the door behind them and switches on a few overhead lights. “What seems to be the problem?”

“My lamp won’t turn on.”

“Have you tried plugging it in?”

“Bucky.”

“Putting a bulb in?”

“How stupid do you think I am?”

“Stupid enough to show up at my shop in the dead of night, apparently.” He pauses, leaning back against a counter to give Steve a slow look. “And here I was, thinking I’d never see you again.”

Steve refrains from stomping his foot. “I said I’d see you around.”

“You _still_ sound mad. Jesus. Or is that just your natural tone of voice?”

 _“I_ sound mad?” It is hard to bristle properly when one’s arms are full of lamp, so Steve approaches the counter and sets it down. He yanks his gloves off, too. “Will you just take a look at it? I have work to do.”

“Did you do something to your hands?” Bucky points at Steve’s newly revealed knuckles, which are busted and red. The cold has made them crack and bleed fresh.

“No.” Steve reaches for his gloves again, but Bucky is faster: he catches Steve’s hand in his own and holds his fingers up to the light. The frown lines on his forehead deepen.

“Got in a few hits this time, huh?” Bucky asks. “You learn quick.”

Steve yanks his hand away. “Will you fix my lamp or not? I can go somewhere else.”

“Nowhere else would let you in. Is that a habit of yours?” Bucky points a finger at Steve’s hands. “Maybe you are stupid. You sure it’s just your lamp that’s broken?”

“Seemed like the right thing to do at the time.”

“Christ,” Bucky mutters, casting his eyes toward the ceiling. He takes a silent moment, seeming to resolve himself to something, then nods. “Yeah, okay. You let me fix your hands, and I’ll take a look at your lamp.”

“That hardly seems a fair trade. Me with two things fixed, and you—”

“That’s my price. Unless you got money to pay me for my services?”

Steve goes quiet. Bucky snorts a laugh.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. No shame in it, Steve, I know how it is. What would be a shame was if you messed your hands up too much to hold a paint brush, or whatever it is you use.”

“Don’t patronize me,” Steve says, but it’s lost the fire. His hands do hurt, now that he thinks about it.

“Come on.” Bucky hefts the lamp from the counter and jerks a thumb toward the back room. “I was up working anyway.”

Steve follows along behind while Bucky leads him past rows filled with everything one would need to fix nearly anything. There’s hammers and nails, neat coils of wire hanging from hooks, even a section of paint brushes that Steve eyes curiously. Everything smells of old wood and lemon, but the floors are so clean Steve can see the lights reflected in the hardwood.

Bucky ushers him beyond it all, to a small back room, the source of the initial light. It seems to double as both office and workshop. Various electronic devices line shelves along the walls, while a hulking secretary desk takes up one corner, its pigeon holes overflowing. Bucky indicates Steve should take a seat at the long work table along one wall, where a set of tools lies open next to what appears to be a dismantled toaster.

“I’ll be right back,” Bucky tells him before disappearing through a second door. His shoes against the hardwood sound as if he is ascending stairs.

Steve perches at the edge of the chair, suddenly unsure of himself. He had come here because he was frustrated and had nowhere else to go, but now that he’s here, peering into the bowels of a toaster in the quiet of Bucky’s workspace, he’s certain that he is imposing. He ought to take his lamp and leave before Bucky even comes back, stop taking advantage—but then, wouldn’t that be even more rude?

Besides, Bucky had inconvenienced him not two weeks ago. An eye for an eye. Maybe once they were even, Steve could leave it well enough alone.

Bucky returns five minutes later with a bowl in one hand and a length of uncut bandage draped over his shoulder. He sets the bowl in front of Steve, then drags over the chair from the secretary desk so he can sit close to him. Steve peers into the bowl, which is filled with a cloudy liquid, and furrows his brow.

“What’s that?” he asks.

“Saltwater,” Bucky says, “for your hands. Soak them while I look over the lamp, okay?”

“Fine.”

Steve plucks his hands from his lap and dips them into the bowl. The water is warm, and while at first it stings the cuts on his knuckles, after a moment it starts to soothe the ache. Bucky eyes him, waiting, so Steve makes a show of relaxing into his seat. With a tiny smile, Bucky pushes the toaster and its guts out of the way to get at the lamp.

“I used to box, back in high school,” Bucky says, feeling the lamp’s cord between two fingers. “You said it won’t turn on? You tried a new bulb?”

“Yes.”

“Right, your cord and plug are fine. It’s either the wiring or the socket.” Bucky picks up a screwdriver and starts to pry the socket shell from the base. “Anyway, I’ve had my share of busted knuckles. The saltwater’ll help, then I can show you how to wrap them so they’ll actually heal.”

The socket shell pops loose. Bucky leans closer to inspect it, deftly exchanging the screwdriver for a pair of wire cutters.

“Why’d you stop?”

“Hmm?”

“Boxing. You said you used to.”

“Oh, that.” He shrugs glibly, talking as he unscrews the socket from the lamp as if this is something he’s done a thousand times. “I got too busy for it, what with everything else—the shop and all.”

“You said its yours?”

“My pop’s, technically, but he don’t work so much anymore.”

Steve senses a story there, but decides based on the set of Bucky’s mouth, it’s best not to pry. He asks a different question instead: “Do you like doing this?”

“What, lamp repair?” Bucky quirks an eyebrow at him. “Sure. You’re awful curious tonight, Rogers.”

“Just making conversation.”

“Playing twenty questions, more like.”

“Well, someone has to ask questions. That’s how conversation works, and seeing as you’re not—”

“I’m joking. Jesus. Don’t you ever take the night off?” He’s smirking now. Steve flinches hard enough to splash the saltwater when Bucky’s foot prods his under the table. “I asked a question, didn’t I?”

“Barely.”

Bucky laughs openly as he reaches for a pair of wire cutters. “Fine, I’ll bite. Art school—that why you came to Brooklyn?”

“No,” Steve says and bites his lip.

In the quiet, Bucky sets his tool aside and pinches freshly stripped wires between his fingers. “You don’t have to tell me,” he mumbles. “Yeah, your wires are fine. It’s the socket.”

Resettling his hands in the saltwater bath, Steve hauls in a deep breath. He taps Bucky’s foot under the table, just with his toes, but it’s enough to make Bucky glance up at him. “My mam wanted me to come here,” Steve says.

“You always do what your mother tells you to do?”

“I try to, yes.”

“Yeah.” Bucky huffs a laugh; Steve softens at the sound. “Me too.”

“Anyways, she and Peggy thought it was a good idea. Once those two set their minds to something, it’s as good as a done deal.”

“Sounds familiar,” Bucky says, then his brow steeples. “Who’s Peggy? Sweetheart back home?”

“No,” Steve says. “No, she’s an old friend.”

Bucky hums and nods. Fiddling with the removed socket, he studies Steve out of the corner of his eye, his scrutiny seeming all the more hawk-like for its nonchalance. Steve squirms in the seat as the saltwater grows cooler.

“Do you love her?” Bucky asks.

Steve draws in a sputtering breath, means to protest on the exhale, but can’t seem to find the words.

“Yeah, you do,” Bucky says. There’s a shadow of a smile at the corner of his mouth.

“It’s not as if it matters either way,” Steve manages. He’d decided as much a long time ago.

“Sure it does,” Bucky says. “It always matters, when you love somebody.”

Steve’s breath hitches, coming more shallowly, while Bucky keeps prodding with his ring finger at the socket he’s already said is faulty like he can’t leave it alone. Then, with a sudden flick of his wrist, he chucks it in a wastebasket near his desk.

“Just a minute,” he says, before ducking out of the door and into the store again. He returns before Steve finds the wherewithal to question what he’s doing, answer in hand: a shiny new socket for the lamp. “I’ll put this in, and she should be good as new.”

He works quietly for a few minutes while Steve watches. There’s no hesitation in his confident hands as they rewire the lamp and start to reassemble it. Steve sinks back into his chair, the fatigue of the late hour finally starting to hit him. Surely he hadn’t worked a full day and attended class tonight, on top of everything that’s just happened? It feels like days ago, not hours, that he’d sat shading tedious drawing after drawing while his hands silently protested, threatening to bleed again and ruin it all before it had any chance to be good.

“We’ll test a bulb,” Bucky says, breaking Steve out of some trance-like state. He gets up to root through the secretary desk and returns with a new light bulb, which he screws into the base before plugging the lamp into an outlet.

With an altogether overdramatic flourish, he turns the switch on the lamp. It lights up without so much as a flicker. When it happens, Steve blinks several times, not at the light but at the brightness with which Bucky beams at him, as if the lamp now working was a miracle instead of something he’d achieved with his own two hands.

Steve smiles back.

“Now your hands,” Bucky says, hardly wasting a second. He tears an end from the length of bandage, then reaches forward to draw Steve’s hands from the bowl with a surprisingly delicate touch. Steve supposes it must take a light hand to work with wires so small. With the torn end, Bucky dries his fingers off then tosses the end to the side. He tears more strips from the bandage before taking one of Steve’s hands between his own.

“Tell me if I make it too tight,” he says as he begins to wind the bandage around Steve’s fingers.

“I will,” Steve breathes. Bucky’s fingers are warm and just as sure against Steve’s skin.

When his first hand is nearly wrapped, Bucky asks, “What do you want?”

“Pardon?” Steve looks up from their hands, brow raised.

“You said your mother wanted you to come here,” Bucky says. “I wanted to know what you want. There’s gotta be something, a man with convictions like you.”

Steve stares at him, lip stuck between his teeth, as Bucky sets his first hand to the side and takes up the second. He hadn’t noticed until now just how quiet it is, here in this back room. There’s only the sound of their breathing, and the soft tear of the bandage as Bucky splits it again.

“To help,” Steve says. “I’ve only ever wanted to be useful. Whatever I do, I want to make other people’s lives easier, not harder.”

Bucky pauses in his ministrations to blink up at him, owlish. “You think art can do that?”

It’s an honest question, not a patronizing one. Steve nods.

“That’s noble of you,” Bucky says. He tucks the end of the bandage under itself, then pats the back of Steve’s hand, pushing it back toward his own lap. All done. “Just be sure to watch out for yourself too, alright? Can’t help anybody if you don’t help yourself first.”

“I know.”

“Sure you do, Steve.”

“And what about you?”

“Me? I never wanted much.” Bucky thumbs at the table’s edge, his mouth pinched. “Feels like the world’s got different plans these days, though, know what I mean?”

“I do. I read the paper.”

“I’m certain you do.” With that, Bucky reaches over and cuts the switch on Steve’s newly fixed lamp. “I’ll walk you out.”

Bucky waits in the doorway while Steve gingerly tugs his gloves back on over his bandages, testing his hands’ flexibility once they’re on. He thinks he’ll remember how to rewrap them; he’d paid close enough attention that he ought to. Something tells him Bucky wouldn’t mind to have to show him again, though, even if he grumbled about it.

With his lamp underarm again, Steve follows Bucky back out into the shop and toward the door. As they pass the aisle with the paint brushes again, Steve perks up, hurrying forward till he’s in stride with Bucky. They pause by the door, Bucky with his hand on the lock, though he doesn’t turn it yet.

“You paint much?” Bucky nods toward the aisle. “Saw you looking.”

“I have. Paints are expensive.”

“The nice ones, sure.”

“Listen, Bucky.”

“Yeah?”

“I wanted to say thank you. You didn’t have to do all that for me.” At Bucky’s raised brow, Steve continues. “I know, I know, but—I appreciate it, really.”

“Don’t mention it.” His voice pitches lower then, like he’s talking to himself. “Happy birthday to me, and all.”

“Bucky,” Steve gasps, “is it your birthday? And you didn’t tell me?”

Bucky just rolls his eyes, wrist turning to throw the lock open. “What would you have done, gone out and got a cake? My ma already baked me one.”

“Still, you ought to have told me. Now I feel—”

“What, rude?” Bucky asks with a laugh. “I said I was happy to do it, didn’t I? That wasn’t a lie, Steve. Helping you’s no bother to me.”

“Still.”

“Yeah, I hear you.” A cold gust of air wrenches its way inside when he opens the door. “Get home safe, alright?”

Steve steps out onto the street and spins to face Bucky before he can shut the door in his face. He sees the sign again, remembering what it was that had occurred to him inside. Repayment for repayment seems circular somehow, but tonight has hardly left him feeling balanced. Dog with a rat indeed.

“Let me repaint your sign,” Steve says.

Bucky blinks at him, confused. “My sign?”

“It’s cracked, and the lettering’s terrible besides. I’ll do you a nicer one.”

“Really?” Bucky says, craning his neck forward so he can eyeball the sign. “It look that bad?”

“Not to be _rude,_ but yes, it does. I’d be happy to do it. Consider it a birthday present.”

Bucky turns his eyes on him, the green soft in the haze of the streetlight. It’s far too cold outside for them both to be standing here like this. “Yeah, okay,” Bucky says. “Thank you, Steve.”

“Thank you.”

“I’ll see you around?”

“You will. Goodnight, Bucky.” He holds up his lamp again, this time as an indication of gratitude.

“Don’t work too hard,” Bucky tells him, already withdrawing back inside his shop. “Goodnight.”


	4. Chapter 4

_Mam,_

_How has your Lent been so far? I’ll admit I haven’t been as penitent as usual this year. Things are busy here in Brooklyn which I know is no excuse but I think it will be fine. What’s been keeping me busy you ask? You always want to know._

_There’s the office for one. Mr. Kirkland says we always get busier in the spring because people have lots of news to share so we sell more paper. I don’t know if this is true or not, but then again here I am writing to you just now so I suppose it could be true. Then of course I have school. I’m sending you a study I did of the photograph you gave me. I wanted you to have a version of it to keep for yourself. I don’t remember if I thanked you for making me take it but I keep it on my dresser. Having it means a lot to me._

_I have to do a portrait of someone I know for my final project in my Figure Drawing class! I don’t know who to ask._ ~~_I would ask you but_~~

_I painted a sign for a friend recently. My first professional art job! I didn’t let him pay me though because it was for his birthday and I used his paintbrushes even. His name is Bucky except that’s not his real name. His little sister Rosie says his name is James but I like Bucky better so I’ll keep calling him that instead. Rosie helped me paint the sign when she came home from school on her lunch break. Oh the sign is for Bucky’s hardware store! I forgot to say. That’s where the brushes are from. Bucky says he will be proud to have a nice sign like that._

_I met him at the church dance I told you about remember? He’s different from my school friends._ ~~_He is_ _Do you know_~~ _Oh have you ever heard of the Brooklyn_ ~~_Doge_ ~~ _Dodgers? They’re a baseball team. Don’t ask me to explain baseball because I don’t know about it._

_It’s starting to get warmer here too finally. (I am feeling better, thanks) I hope you have a good Easter! Please tell everyone that I said hello._

_With love your son,_ _  
_ _Steve_

 

Steve drops back by the week after he finishes the sign, just to be sure that it’s holding up. Someone could have smudged it before the paint had the chance to dry, or perhaps Bucky has decided he doesn’t like the colors. He had let Steve pick them out, and while Steve thinks the white lettering against the deep green background looks fresh, it isn’t his store so Bucky should have the final word. He wouldn’t mind to do it over again, if that’s what Bucky decides.

“People’ve been complimenting it.”

Steve realizes with a start that Bucky is standing propped in the doorway, watching him. He still has on a tie from church, though it’s loosened now.

“Have they?” Steve asks.

“Sure, and why not? I told you last week it looks real good.”

“I had to come make sure the paint hadn’t degraded. I wasn’t familiar with the kind you had.”

“Come on in,” Bucky tells him, waving him inside. “The girls are all upstairs. I know they’d like to say hello to you.”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

“You got somewhere else to be?”

Steve squints at him, but decides not to be irritated at the implication. It’s Sunday, after all. He follows Bucky into the shop, still closed for another hour, and through the back room. The second door opens to a short hall, a staircase at its end. Bucky leads him upstairs to the landing of his family’s apartment, directly above the store.

“Look what the cat dragged in,” Bucky announces, holding the door open for Steve.

“Are you the cat?” Steve asks, but Bucky hasn’t the time to respond before something small and dark-headed latches onto Steve’s legs.

“Steve!” Rosie shouts, beaming up at him, gap-toothed.

“Let the man walk, Rosemarie,” Bucky says.

Steve waves him off. “That’s okay. Hi, Rosie.”

“People like our sign.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“Hi, Steve,” another voice says. Steve glances up to see Janet waving at him from a dining table, beyond the small sitting area. Becca smiles from beside her, a magazine spread out before the both of them. “How are you?”

“I’m well, and you?”

“Good, thanks,” she says, then ducks her head, giggling. Becca swats her on the arm but seems on the verge of laughter herself, for some reason unbeknownst to Steve. He glances askance at Bucky, who simply rolls his eyes and coaxes Steve farther into the room with a hand at his shoulder. There’s not much else place to go except to take a seat at the table, which dominates the middle of the room. Through an archway, there’s a small kitchen and another door that must lead to a bedroom. As Steve takes the seat Bucky points toward, he notices two fold-up beds along the far wall.

It’s a small space, for six people—and most of them grown. None of the Barneses seem uncomfortable with the proximity, however. In fact, rather than take a chair, Rosie simply wedges herself between her two sisters for a look at their magazine.

“Elbows off the table,” comes yet another voice, this time from the kitchen. “And what are you laughing about?”

“Nothing, Ma!”

“Nothing, my big toe,” Bucky mutters.

A woman who is presumably Bucky’s mother—same eyes, same thick brown hair—appears in the kitchen doorway, wielding a wooden spoon. “If it really is nothing, then you won’t have a problem setting the table. Oh,” she pauses, pointing her spoon toward Steve, “we have an extra.”

“Oh, no, ma’am, I was just stopping by to say hello,” Steve says.

She talks over him before he’s able to finish. “Nonsense, what’s one more, really? Janny, set him a spot—and don’t mind putting one out for your father.”

“Where is Pop?” Bucky calls as she disappears back into the kitchen. There’s a noncommittal hum in response echoed by the clang of a pot. Bucky’s mouth tightens, but he doesn’t say anything else as the two elder girls get up to set the table. Rosie grabs the magazine and trails after them.

“I didn’t mean to stay for lunch,” Steve says.

“It’s happening whether you like it or not,” Bucky says, turning to him with a smile. “Ma can be a bit tyrannical when it comes to hospitality.”

“Okay.”

At the bob of Steve’s throat, Bucky laughs, reaching for Steve’s knee under the table. He gives it an encouraging squeeze before withdrawing his hand. “I take it you don’t come from a big family back in Ireland.”

“No, it’s just me and Mam.”

“Your father?”

“He died in the civil war.”

Confusion flickers over Bucky’s face for an instant before clarity takes hold. He nods, solemn, his eyes on the table.

“Yours is …?” Steve prompts.

“He fought in the Great War,” Bucky says. “Messed him up pretty good, only it took us a long time to notice just how bad. You’ll meet him sometime, I guess. I think—he’s asleep right now, so it’s really no bother that you’re here. Promise.”

His expression turns in an instant, quick enough to give Steve whiplash, but he’ll let Bucky have it if he needs it. “What are we having?”

Bucky’s mother carries to the table a plate stacked with hot ham sandwiches and sets it next to the baked beans and uncanned slices of peach. They pass the dishes around, each taking their fill, chattering with and over one another in the process.

“I’m Freddie,” Bucky’s mother says as she takes her seat, reaching across the table for Steve’s hand.

“Steve Rogers.”

“Oh, Steve, of course. I’d been wondering when we’d get to meet you.”

Steve cuts at Bucky, who conveniently has his mouth full. “Pardon?”

“Jamie’s mentioned you,” Freddie says, giving them both a break.

Steve wonders, again, just what Bucky has told his family about him.

It’s easy enough to get caught up in the Barneses’ chatter. They all talk with their mouths full half the time, even Mrs. Barnes, who does her best to remind them it’s rude but seems to understand she fights a losing battle. The food is good, and Steve learns about Becca’s job at a garment factory and how it makes Bucky’s jaw twitch when she talks about it. Rosie interrupts to regale them with the woes of the third grade. They all include him in the conversation as seamlessly as if he were always a part of it, right through dessert and a cup of coffee too.

Bucky sets his mug down and glances at the clock on the wall. “I ought to go open the shop.”

“It’s a shame we open at all on a Sunday,” Mrs. Barnes says.

“I wouldn’t if I could help it, Ma.”

“I know, I know. Go on, I’ll be down to help once the kitchen’s clean.”

“We can do that, Ma,” Becca chimes in.

“Yes, but can you do it _well?”_

Steve chuckles along with Bucky, taking this as his cue to head home for the day. His plant needs watering at any rate. “Thank you for lunch, Mrs. Barnes.”

“It’s Freddie, Steve, and you’re welcome any time. I like you better than Bucky’s other friends.”

“Goodbye, Steve!” the girls all chorus. Rosie even blows him a kiss.

Bucky laughs as they head toward the door. “Alright, casanova, c’mon.”

Once inside the back room again, Steve asks, “What’s wrong with your other friends?”

“Ah, nothin’,” Bucky huffs. He pauses by the shelves, adjusting a percolator’s position along it. “Well, they’re all a bunch of loudmouth skirt-chasers, but besides that, they’re alright.”

“Well, you know what they say about the company one keeps.”

“You calling me a loudmouth skirt-chaser, Rogers?”

“If the label suits you.”

“Yeah, and what does that make you?”

“You’re the one who called me casanova.”

Bucky’s head drops, hanging while he shakes with silent laughter. “Fine, yeah, we’re a real pair of valentines.”

“God’s truth,” Steve says, then swallows thickly.

Taking a sobering breath, Bucky finds Steve’s eyes again. “Listen, Steve, I got a couple Dodgers tickets for me and my loudmouth friends, but I think I’d rather you and Rosie came with me instead.”

“Why’s that?”

“‘Cause I like you two better, that’s why.”

Ignoring the weird pinch in his chest, Steve asks, “Rosie likes baseball too?”

“The kid’s from Brooklyn, right? She’s practically rabid for it,” Bucky says. “Kind of annoying sometimes, actually. Anyhow, what do you say? You free two Saturdays from now?”

“You’ll have to explain the rules to me again.”

“You say that like I mind. I’ll even buy you some cracker jack.”

“Will you now?”

“Gotta give you the proper experience, don’t I?”

“I’ll hold you to that,” Steve says, smiling despite himself.

 

When Steve meets Bucky and Rosie to catch a streetcar down Flatbush Avenue, the both of them are practically radiating with excitement. Bucky claps him on the shoulder and flashes their tickets at him before shuffling Steve onto the car. Rosie plonks into a seat between them and proceeds to twists this way and that to look out the windows as the car rattles southbound toward the park.

“I got my mitt, see, in case there’s any fly balls,” she says, brandishing the mitt under Steve’s nose. It’s too big for her hand, but she wears it proudly.

Bucky explains the game to Steve again along the way, as promised, with occasional interjections from Rosie. Steve thinks he gets the gist of it, and even finds himself getting excited too as they leave the streetcar to walk to Ebbets Field.

The stadium is grand—and packed to the brim on a Saturday. Steve feels rather like a sardine in a tin as they wriggle between other fans to get to their seats. They’re cheap, up in the nosebleeds, but Steve doesn’t mind so long as the other two don’t seem to. Bucky keeps his other promise too and buys them all a box of cracker jack to split as the game gets underway.

Truth be told, Steve has trouble following the nuances of the game. It seems to go in fits and starts, and Bucky and Rosie aren’t much help now that it’s begun—too busy shouting to narrate for him. Their enthusiasm is catching anyway, and Steve finds himself yelling along with them and the rest of the crowd, even if he has no idea whether he’s cheering or jeering half the time.

Once, when the Dodgers have the bases loaded and their next player steps up to bat, Bucky slides to the edge of his seat, anticipating. The batter strikes, and Bucky’s hand flies out to grip Steve’s leg, like he needs a handhold to steady him.

Steve glances sideways, startled, but Bucky isn’t watching him. His eyes are trained on the field below, free hand balled into a fist over his mouth. Steve’s heart sits in his throat—secondhand excitement. He watches Bucky instead, waiting for the moment, wanting to see it burst over his face.

The not knowing—it bothers him less, now. He isn’t sure why. It’s not that he thinks of Bucky any less than he had in those first few maddening weeks; perhaps it’s that, now that he sees more of him, he has more to think about. That distracts from the indecipherable knot at the center of him enough to loosen it, though he still can’t find its ends. Why shouldn’t he think of him, anyway? They’re proper friends now; Bucky had said as much himself. If Steve’s pages still don’t come out right, well, he’ll only have to keep trying.

It’s the reason he watches, so that he can try again and get it right. Maybe once he does, then he’ll settle. That’s all he wants: to put a thumb on it and put it away.

Something good must happen on the field. Bucky’s fingers, gripping tight just above Steve’s knee, suddenly loosen as his mouth falls open. Before Steve knows it, Bucky’s on his feet, yanking Steve up with him and into a brief, searing hug before he breaks away to shout more nonsense at top volume.

Rosie’s yelling too, grinning from ear to ear. Steve finally turns toward the field to check the scoreboard and sees that—yes—the Dodgers have finally scored.

Steve gives a whoop too, which earns him a grin from Bucky for his efforts.

“I can’t believe you’ve lived here for six months, and that was your first Dodgers game!” Bucky crows later, as they’re headed back for the streetcar to take them uptown again.

Steve mumbles something in response, reminded of Arnie’s similar jabbing.

“Seriously, Steve, it’s like you don’t even live here,” Bucky says.

“Hey, I knew who they were, didn’t I?” It’s hard to live in Brooklyn and not catch conversations about baseball every three blocks, frankly.

“It’s not just that,” Bucky continues, “and I’m not trying to lecture you or anything, but you really ought to get out more.”

“What, with you?”

“Well, sure.” Bucky shrugs. “No one better than a local to show you. If you’re gonna live in Brooklyn, you might as well _live_ in Brooklyn.”

There’s no denying that he’s right. Steve, for all the progress he’s made in the past half a year, has still hardly so much as raked the topsoil of this place. It’s as if he’s been stuck thinking he’ll still return home to Enniscorthy one day—that being here is all temporary. A means to some end rather than his permanent situation.

Bucky’s only telling the truth. Steve ought to get on with it.

Still, when he bites his lip and falls quiet in his seat, Bucky doesn’t press it anymore. He changes the subject. Steve chats along with him while Rosie, baseball glove in her lap, nods off against his shoulder.

 

“You should all be looking for a subject for your final portraits by now,” Professor Calamett tells them toward the end of their next class. “Remember, I want you to choose someone you know.”

Arnie cuts Steve a glance, raising an eyebrow. Steve just shrugs as he shuffles his notes.

“Drawing someone you know is often difficult,” their professor continues, “precisely because you know them. You’re familiar enough with their face to see when it’s wrong, or when it doesn’t capture who they are—and I want you to capture someone. You may love your grandmother, but is she a dynamic subject? Be thinking. And remember: I don’t want you choosing your classmates. You all have lovely, dynamic faces, but I see enough of them every week. Have a good night.”

They tumble down the steps in a chattering tangle, as per usual. Steve trails just behind Therese and Lydia.

“I might ask my sister,” Therese says. “Or not bother asking and just hole up in her kitchen for half a day, either way.”

When Steve laughs, Lydia looks over her shoulder at him with a smile. “Have you decided, Steve?”

He gives a noncommittal hum, casting around for Arnie and Louis behind him to chime in and save him. He’s thought about it, sure, but most of the people he’d like to ask live across the ocean. There’s always Father Healy, he supposes, and he would make an interesting study—but Steve’s not certain he likes the idea of spending that much time with the priest, much as he likes him. He’s uncomfortably discerning sometimes.

“What about your new friend?” Arnie asks, prodding Steve in the back with a pencil.

“Do you mean his plant?” Louis asks.

“No, I mean the one he spends all his time with so he’s too busy to hang out with us.”

“Oh, Arnie, don’t be such a bitter pill,” Lydia says. “It’s good Steve has other friends.”

“You could bring him around sometime, Steve,” Arnie says.

Steve eyes him. “So you can what, scare him off? Besides, you’ve met him once already.”

“I have?” Arnie’s eyes widen. “When?”

“I’m going to miss my train,” Steve says, hurrying down the front stairs to the pavement.

“Steve!” Arnie calls after him. “Why don’t I remember this?”

The others laugh as Steve gives a chipper wave and makes his exit. On his ride home, he admits that Arnie’s idea hadn’t been such a bad one, even if he’d been making a point with it. He might as well ask Bucky next time he sees him. Perhaps he’ll even be amenable—he’d mentioned it in passing that once.

If he’s not, Steve can always ask Father Healy, and no harm done. But the idea of Bucky, propped on a stool or against the windowsill, while Steve takes out pencil and paper to finally get the shape of him right—it does have a certain appeal.

He’ll ask. It’s only a favor.

 

“Now, what do I have to do again?” Bucky asks the moment Steve opens the door to let him in.

He stands in the hall, hands shoved in his pockets. Steve, for his own part, feels a bit twitchy today too—but that’s not so far off his usual mark. He has no idea what would make Bucky rock on his toes like that, though.

“Well, you’ll come inside first, for starters.” Steve shuffles backward a few steps to make room, trying out a tentative smile.

Bucky eyes him strangely for a moment, then with a huff, he shambles his way inside. Latching the door closed, Steve turns to see him standing in the middle of the room, hands on hips.

“Nice place you got here.” Bucky nods toward the plant in the windowsill.

“Matchbox,” Steve mutters, slipping past him to adjust the fern’s fronds. It’s gotten bigger; he’ll need to repot it soon. “But thank you.”

“Do you get lonely, living on your own?” Bucky asks.

Steve turns to face him. In the small space of his kitchen, they’re practically on top of one another. He’d forgotten why he rarely has anyone over, if he can help it. There’s no room for your elbows.

“You get used to it,” Steve says. “Growing up, my mam worked a lot, so it’s not that different to me.”

Bucky shakes his head, brow pinched, but doesn’t say anything.

“Thank you again for agreeing to this,” Steve says.

“Oh, sure, how could I say no?” Bucky’s face brightens. “You offering to immortalize this mug on paper’s about the best offer I ever heard.”

Steve rolls his eyes. “Don’t let it go to your head, Barnes. It’s plenty big already.”

“No need to be so coy with me, Rogers.”

“Who’s being coy?”

“I won’t tell anybody you think I’m handsome.”

“No one likes an ego,” Steve says, turning toward the table to fuss with his supplies.

“From personal experience, I can tell you that’s not true—riles the ladies up something nice. Maybe you ought to try it, next time we go out. I’ll set you up with—”

“Can we get started, or would you rather talk about women into the afternoon?”

Bucky shuts his mouth, but the way his eyes flash, he’s hardly feeling chastised. “I’m fine with multitasking.”

“Shut it, you.”

“Fine, okay, where do you want me?”

“Oh.” Steve casts his eyes about the room. “I hadn’t considered.”

There’s the table, of course, but if Steve sat Bucky there, he’d have to wedge himself into a corner for a good angle. Then the table would block half his body besides, and Steve wants the whole of him. If he had a proper sitting area with a couch, they would be golden, but even calling his place a matchbox is generous. He could have him lean against the window, perhaps crack it to let the cool breeze in to ruffle his hair, but Bucky is an inexperienced model and might get uncomfortable standing for as long as Steve would need him to. Steve taps his chin, wondering if perhaps they ought to move locations entirely, though he’d much rather stay here.  He ought to have thought this through already, damn him.

Bucky, sensing Steve’s growing unease, starts to sniff about too. Before Steve can say a word to stop him, he’s shouldered open the door to the bedroom.

“Well, what about in here?” Bucky calls over his shoulder. “There’s a window and all. You need good light, right?”

“I do.”

“The one in here faces west, so you’ll keep it longer.”

He hesitates, uncomfortable at the thought of having Bucky so far into his private space, but this is presenting itself as their only option if Steve wants to get anything done today. It’s not as if Bucky is being purposely invasive; he’s only trying to help, Steve reminds himself, and is going quite beyond the call of duty to make sure that he does.

Steve gathers his things from the table and follows Bucky into his room. Bucky already has the curtains pushed aside to let the light in. It’s not a large window by any means, but if Steve cuts the small lamp on his nightstand on as well, he might have some interesting shadows with which to work.

“How do want me?”

Steve’s eyes flicker to Bucky, standing in the middle of the room, gone tense again. He’s nervous, Steve realizes, and the need to put him at ease makes Steve’s grip on his sketchpad loosen. He sets his things on top of the dresser and steps backward to get an eye full of the room.

There’s really only one place for it. Steve points at the bed.

Bucky raises a single eyebrow, but then eases down onto Steve’s twin frame. Steve goes to drag a chair from his table into the doorway so that he can sit. Pad in his lap and pencil in hand, Steve glances up to gauge the lines—but it’s all wrong.

He frowns at Bucky, who has made no further attempts to relax. He’s perched on the edge of the bed as if he’d been asked to sit atop thorns. It’s far from the easy, languid posture Steve has come to associate with him—the way he means to capture him.

“Bucky.”

“What? Am I doing something wrong?” Bucky’s wide eyes find Steve’s across the room.

“Well, you—you need to look more natural. Try taking your shoes off or something.”

“Natural, he says,” Bucky mutters, but he toes his shoes loose. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Like you belong.”

“This is your room.”

“I wouldn’t think you would have trouble taking up space that wasn’t yours,” Steve says, which earns him Bucky’s flushed cheeks. The color’s nice. “Just make it your bed for now.”

“Fine.”

To his credit, Bucky does take direction well. Kicking his shoes off the rest of the way, they clatter to the floor while he turns to grab Steve’s pillow and mash it into a more favorable shape. He undoes the first few buttons of his shirt and leans back for a moment before he must decide to hell with it all and pops open the rest, yanking his shirt tails out of his trousers. He flops back against the pillow, one foot planted on the bed so his pant leg rides up to reveal a skinny ankle. With his other leg stretched out long, Steve can spot the hole in the bottom of his sock.

Bucky sighs, put-upon, and tips his head back against the wall with a thud. He looks tired, as if he’s just come home from work, like he’s taking a moment to rest before he gets up to fetch a glass of water or something stronger.

His green eyes are still sharp, though, studying Steve for some indication that he’s got it right this time. Rather than answer, Steve sets his tongue between his teeth and his pencil to the blank page.

“You know,” Bucky begins, and Steve snorts; he should’ve known Bucky wouldn’t keep quiet. “Speaking of you getting out more.”

“Were we speaking about it?”

“I hear there’s a lot to see up in Harlem—artistically speaking, I mean, a lotta stuff you might find interesting.”

“I’ve heard that too.”

“We could go up there sometime, you and me. You ever been into the city?”

Steve shakes his head and adjust his angle against the page.

“There’s a club I know, a great place. Tommy Wilson and his band play there, _great_ jazz. I could teach you how to dance properly to music like that.”

“I know how to dance.”

“Sure, sure,” Bucky hums, “your Peggy taught you a fine two-step, but you need to learn how to swing if you’re ever going to keep up.”

“Bucky?”

“Yeah?”

“Do me a favor. Grab that book off my nightstand, stick your nose in it, and shut the hell up so I can concentrate on your big forehead.”

Bucky huffs and mutters something under his breath that Steve doesn’t catch, but he swipes the book up and cracks it open in his lap. It’s some textbook, he probably won’t find it particularly interesting, but Steve can’t entertain him and work at the same time. He peruses the pages while Steve gets his basic lines down on the page. There must be enough to capture his attention, because he doesn’t make another sound, save for the rasp of page against page.

Steve adds the book into his rough sketch, then glances up to find that Bucky is no longer looking at it at all. He has his face turned toward the window now, staring out, the light falling across his relaxed features in a way that makes Steve’s breath go short.

“Stay like that,” Steve says.

Bucky does as he’s told. The only movement Steve spots is in his eyes, sometimes flickering away from the window to hold Steve’s for an instant.

Steve’s hand flies across the page to capture him—in fact, can’t seem to move fast enough. It’s easier than he would have thought possible, as if he’d drawn him a thousand times over already, as if his shape were as familiar to Steve as a simple circle. He hunches over the page to get closer. He knows he’ll pay for the angle of his neck when it aches later, but right now, little else matters besides putting down on paper what he sees in front of him.

At some point, Bucky clears his throat, softly as if he’s trying not to disturb the quiet. He says, “You’re more intense about this than I expected.”

“Well, what did you expect?”

“I don’t know.”

Steve’s eyes rove over him, devouring details.

“What’s going on in your head right now?” Bucky asks.

“I don’t know if I can explain it.”

“I wouldn’t mind hearing you try.”

“It’s not just—” Steve cuts off. He sighs, gives himself a moment to stare at what he has so far. “It’s not just taking down an image, but finding the truth. Like with a book, it’s more than only facts, it’s presenting them so that they mean something. There has to be meaning or it’s just a picture, however pretty.”

Bucky stays quiet for so long that Steve thinks he won’t say anything else. He starts to clean up the linework and only just catches his question.

“What does it mean?”

“I’ll know when I’m done.”

It starts to come together properly then. Once it does, once he has most of what he needs, he doesn’t have much reason to look up anymore. In his focus, Steve doesn’t notice when Bucky shifts and sets the book to the side. He hears his name at one point, called across the room, but doesn’t look up from shading to see what it’s about. Bent so close to the page, his world’s narrowed down to just this. His own mother could hardly get his attention, whenever he would get this fixated.

The bed springs creak. There’s the sound of someone pulling on shoes. Steve does spare half a glance then, to see Bucky tucking his shirt back in.

“Seems like you don’t need me for this bit,” Bucky says.

Steve hums, chewing his thumb while he studies the page. It’s not quite done.

Bucky’s shoes thud against the hardwood. Steve barely registers that he’s leaving, doesn’t think to say goodbye or thank him. A warm, strong hand curls over his shoulder. Without setting his pencil aside, Steve presses into the touch, his thumb tracing the curve of the jaw on the page. The hand at his shoulder shifts, its fingers dipping into Steve’s loose collar to brush against the juncture of his neck. In another instant, the touch disappears.

He hears the front door shut a minute or so later.

When he starts to lose the light in the room, he’s forced to concede and sit back a moment. He takes stock of what he’s done. He never polishes things off in one sitting like this. The finished drawing rests in his lap, where hours before there had been nothing but a piece of paper, white as snow.

Bucky, casual on Steve’s bed, legs splayed. His undershirt hangs low enough to reveal a smattering of chest hair. The hole in his sock. The odd focus in his eye as he gazes out the window. There’s something about him that looks as though, despite his affected ease, he might launch himself from the bed at any moment, as if he were a coiled spring.

Careful not to smudge, Steve sets his fingertip against the full curve of Bucky’s lower lip. It isn’t focus, he realizes, that he’s seeing in Bucky’s eyes. He casts about his head for the word.

The moment he finds it, the breath punches out his lungs.

Longing.

Only it’s his, projected onto the page, apparent in every meticulously rendered detail. His hand flies to his mouth.

He expects that it should feel like taking a stroll in the dark and suddenly finding oneself over the edge of a cliff. It does, in a way—but rather than feeling terrified, he feels relieved. The more the thought settles in his head, the more it feels like he’s simply turned a page, continued a sentence from the middle of a chapter. It’s only revelatory in that he hadn’t known those were the words he would find on the next page. Beyond that, his surprise is greater in realizing that this isn’t surprising at all.

There’s his answer, plain in front of him. To think that he had been right, in those first few days: all it took to find it was putting it to paper.

His pencil, now abandoned, rolls off the page and hits him in the toe. He must have taken his shoes off too, at some point. The pain is negligible, but it’s jarring enough to make him realize he ought to move. Ought to do something, rather than just sit here. There’s been a slight shift in the universe, a minor recalibration, but he still needs dinner.

He takes his drawing pad to the kitchen, where he sets it on his work table and flicks on the lamp. In this light, it looks just as it did. That’s comforting, to know that in the span of half a minute and five feet, he feels the same—just as arrested by it. He puts the kettle on and scrounges up something to eat while the water comes to a boil. With his tea steeped and plate set, he drags his chair back into the room and sinks into it.

It’s hard to tear his eyes away, even to eat. He’d thought figuring this out would quell his preoccupation, but perhaps it’s only exacerbated it. Only now, he finds that rather than feeling frustrated, he’s happy—or something similar anyway. Exhilarated. Exonerated.

It makes so much sense that he almost feels stupid with it. All that time, all those spare moments spent ruminating over what ought to have been obvious. He simply hadn’t had the framework to understand why, when Bucky would touch him with such sure hands, it sparked like flint in his belly. It had never occurred to him because he hadn’t been capable of reading the signs. Like someone dropped into a foreign country with its foreign tongue, he had no way to navigate.

Steve can’t remember the way it felt the first time he’d been able to read a book on his own, but he imagines it felt something like this.

He has no idea what to do about it. He supposes he’ll have to do something eventually, even if all that is is deciding to do nothing. For now, he’ll simply sit with it till his heart re-enters his chest and eat his dinner in the meantime.

It’s strange, to have words for it now. He _wants_ him. Steve doesn’t know that he’s ever wanted anything else as much as he wants him. What he wants, precisely, he doesn’t know either. To crack open all these newly decipherable pages and devour them till he’s memorized every last word and phrase, maybe.

In the early morning, he wakes up wanting—desiring, yearning, every word he can think of. With this, at least, there is a clear directive. The body doesn’t quibble the way the heart does. The drawing’s still laying on the kitchen table, where he had left it sometime in the lates hours when he came to bed, but it’s still clear in his head. Burned on the inside of his eyelids for the rest of his life, if Steve had to guess. That makes it easy, when he trails a hand low over his belly and pushes his pants aside.

Steve doesn’t know how far this goes—if it’s only Bucky, or if his desire runs deeper than that. It doesn’t matter much either way when he takes himself in hand. At this moment, there is specificity in his longing. A particular man in his head—in his bed.

If he were to show Bucky that page, would he see the same thing? Would it be as obvious to him? What would happen then, if it were? He might let Steve brush his thumb over his lips, the way he’d done to the drawing. Maybe he would let him do more than that.

Steve isn’t sure how it works, between two men, but he knows enough to be able to guess. He and Bucky both have such clever, useful hands—surely the two of them would figure something out together.

Just how far could he go? Two hands, down, lower, hot and heaving—a touch so unexpectedly gentle—

He comes harder than he has in months.

The weather is turning outside, spring’s warm touch only just out of reach this early in the day. Soon there won’t be a trace of the cold left. Steve can tell just from the morning light, how buttery yellow it is as it slants through his window. There’s no chill to bother his joints either. He takes his time, luxuriating in the feel of his bed, as if he could still feel the indent of Bucky’s body in the mattress. For just a few minutes, he can imagine what it’s like to be so at ease in his own body the way Bucky seems to be.

He’ll get up eventually, start his day, go to church like he should, but he’d like to revel in this a while longer. He isn’t naive; he knows the general opinion about these sorts of exploits. It ought to be scary, but perhaps he’s still too pliant from sleep and sex to bother with fear. If he bursts into flame the second he sets foot on holy ground, then so be it.

Dragging his fingers over his belly, Steve thinks that might not be such a bad way to go. He’d already caught fire once this morning, and that had felt plenty good.

He won’t feel so cavalier about it once he’s out in the world again. It might be like carrying something dear around with him, like when he was a child and had found a particularly pretty stone along the riverbank. He would squirrel it away for himself and think, _No one knows what I have in my pocket._

Over the next few days, he carries it, a precious secret. No one is the wiser, which makes it all the more thrilling. He spends half the sermon during Sunday mass thinking about Bucky instead, and clever though Father Healy may be, he’s no telepath. Steve shakes his hand after the service same as he always does.

Nothing has changed, when it comes down to it. No one has to know.

Only, won’t someone figure it out? Surely _someone_ might. A perfect stranger stares at Steve a beat too long on the subway—long enough to make him certain that he’s been found out. He’s only being paranoid, he realizes as the person exits the train without another glance in his direction. His day goes on.

Most of the time, he hardly even thinks about it beyond a vague sense of contentment at having unraveled the knot. Between work at the office and his classes at the college, there’s not much time for him to dwell on it.

He catches himself dwelling, sometimes.

The water runs cold while washing his hands in the office restroom. He’d been staring at himself in the mirror, wondering what would happen if Mr. Kirkland found out. It’s not as if anyone can see it on his face.

He knows he will need to call on Bucky soon. He’ll want to see the completed drawing, and Steve will have to show it to him. For a moment, one late evening, he holds the page over the sink in his kitchen for nearly ten minutes. He could run the tap over it till it turned to pulp in his hands. He would only have to tell Bucky that he hadn’t liked the way it had come out after all, and that he’s elected to draw Father Healy instead. Bucky might gripe, pretend his feelings were hurt, but it wouldn’t matter to him in the long run. Then Steve would be safe from having to show him, and their friendship could survive intact.

He doesn’t destroy it, in the end. He can’t bring himself to. How could he, when it’s so beautiful? He laughs at himself as he stows it back inside the portfolio folder for thinking he would ever want to be rid of it. He laughs his way through a solitary dinner too—gets overcome and has to set his fork to the side. It’s so obvious to him now, that this is what it had been about all along, that it’s hilarious he’d spent so long mired in confusion and frustration over it.

He’d bought a plant to match Bucky’s _eyes,_ for Christ’s sake. How dense could a person be?

He figured this much out. The rest will come to him too, in time.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note the change in chapter number. Maybe one day I will manage a nice, even number, but this work is not where I do that.

Before class begins one evening, Arnie takes Steve by the elbow and steers him toward a bench in the hall.

“Hey, will you take a look at this?” Arnie asks.

“I’m not a medical professional, Arnie.”

“No, I mean my final study, you blockhead.” 

Arnie sticks a hand in his bag and draws a thick pad of paper from within. He rifles through it for a moment, searching, till he finds the page that he wants. Steve leans over to peer at the pad in Arnie’s lap. 

“Who is this?” Steve asks.

“My cousin.”

“The shading’s lovely.”

“Is it?”

Steve pokes him in the shoulder. “It’s a nice job, really.”

Arnie considers him. “Yeah, you’re not the type to spare my feelings.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Let’s see yours then.”

“Oh, I don’t—” 

He has it with him, of course, but no one else has seen it. Arnie is a friend, but Steve isn’t sure how much he cares to let him look just yet. This one feels much closer to the vest than he’s used to—but perhaps that’s all the more reason to share it with someone else first. If he can’t let Arnie look, how is he ever supposed to let Bucky see it?

Carefully, he prises it from his folder and passes it to Arnie. Steve watches while he looks, just to gauge his reaction, but his face has gone curiously neutral.

“Huh.”

“What?”

“This is that friend of yours?”

“Yes.”

“Well, Steve—”

“What?”

Arnie cuts him a dry look, but at the sight of Steve’s face, he frowns. “Nothing. “

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you’ve got a lot of talent, but tell your friend he’s got a hole in his sock, would you?”

Steve snorts, taking the page back to put away. “I’ll let him know.”

“You do that. Now c’mon.”

Arnie takes Steve by the elbow and drags him to class, chuckling under his breath the whole way like there’s something he finds particularly funny. Steve’s not sure what it could be and doesn’t bother asking, too relieved with Arnie’s tepid reaction to the piece. Perhaps it is just Steve that sees it.

 

On Saturday evening, Steve finds himself with his shoe polish brush in hand, shining his brogues till they gleam under the lamplight. He had been nearly ready to leave, already having fussed over and given up on his hair, when he had noticed that his shoes were dull. Once he has them so that they’re practically reflective, he slides them on and heads toward the door. A quick stop in the washroom up the hall to check that his tie and hat are still sitting where they ought, then he takes the stairs down to street level.

He can hear the music spilling out of the parish hall from up the block. They must be keeping the doors propped open, now that it’s warmed up enough that the breeze is a blessing rather than a curse. He supposes it’s as much a way to entice a crowd inside as anything else. It’s certainly doing the job for him, feet carrying him that much faster toward the church.

The hall isn’t packed, though it’s full enough that he has to squirm between people to get to the refreshment table. He greets Mrs. Connor by name as she passes him a lemonade. Drink in hand, he makes his way to the room’s edge, a better vantage point for searching the crowd.

Steve spots him easily enough. It’s hard not to; he stands out so much, Steve imagines that half the attendees must have their eyes on him. 

Bucky looks as lithe as ever, his feet a whirlwind over the floor. His partner keeps up as best as she can as the two of them twirl between and around less capable couples. Even from here, Steve can see the broad smile plastered across his face. There’s such clear confidence to the way he moves, trusting his body to do what it ought, to do what he asks of it.

He makes it look so goddamn easy.

His mouth gone suddenly dry, Steve gulps down his drink. Bucky had offered to teach him how to dance like that. Steve knows for certain he doesn’t have the coordination or the wherewithal, but he thinks he might be willing to let him try, if that’s still on the table. Maybe it would be so easy, if he had someone to guide him. He wonders who taught Bucky—or if he had figured it out all on his own, or had simply been born knowing how to move with such grace and unabashed delight.

Steve pinches himself on the wrist to remind himself that he’s in public—and in church, no less—before he falls off the train and into indecency.

He laughs at himself as he turns to find a seat. It’s good to know that his desire extends beyond the edges of a piece of paper, anyway.

The song winds down. Before he makes it into a chair, a voice calls out to him.

“Hey, stranger.”

Steve spins around, fumbling his empty cup, to find Bucky facing him. All Steve’s insides lurch at the sight of him, real and smirking.

“Hi, Bucky.”

“I’d wondered if you’d finally disappeared on me. I thought, maybe my amateur modeling offended his artistic sensibilities.”

“Oh, no—I’ve just been—” Steve shrugs, jerky. “Not trying to give you the brush off or anything. I’d tell you before I did.”

Bucky snorts a laugh. “Yeah, guess you would. I really wasn’t so bad?”

“No, you—you did a fine job, I promise.”   

“You alright, Steve?”

“Am I—?”

“Just seem kind of jumpy tonight, is all.”

“I’m fine.”

“C’mon, I could use some air. Let’s go outside for a bit, yeah?”

Steve nods and ducks after Bucky through the crowd. It hadn’t occurred to him that perhaps he ought to have planned for this in some way—accounted for his own nerves, decided what to do about them. He always was bad about jumping in with his socks still on. Bucky glances over his shoulder, making sure Steve is with him, and the soft smile on his face burns in Steve’s core.

He supposes, though, as they exit the hall and the breeze hits his face, that he’d felt this way all along. It’s only now that he’s aware of the cause—hyperaware, tuned into it so sharply—that he doesn’t know how to handle himself. Or perhaps he hadn’t known how to handle himself through any of it, and nothing at all has changed.    

If that’s the case, then there’s no real reason to fret. He’s being entirely nonsensical about it. It’s not as if Bucky will be able to smell it on him—and he likes Steve. They’re friends.

Bucky leans against the brick wall with a sigh. He fishes a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. Turning to Steve, he asks, “You mind?”

“No, go ahead.”

“Thanks.”

He lights his cigarette, the flame bright and then gone after an instant. Steve shoves his hands in his pockets. His toes tap on the pavement, rhythmless.

“Were you having fun?” he asks.

“Hmm? Oh, I was, yeah.”

“You looked it.”

“You were watching me?”

“I—”

“I’m only joking, Rogers.”

“Right.”

“You sure you’re okay?”

“I’m  _ fine.”  _

“Christ, okay, I’ll leave it alone.” 

Bucky holds up his hands, cigarette dangling between the fingers of the left. Steve eyes its glowing end, flicks his gaze to Bucky’s face, before turning to stare at the street. Has it always been tense like this, or is he already ruining it?

“Sorry.”

“No harm done.” Bucky takes a slow drag of his cigarette, careful to angle his exhale downwind. “Listen, you wanna get out of here?”

“Where would we go?”

Bucky shrugs, as if it hardly matters at all.

“What about your sisters?”

“They’re not here tonight.”

“Then why are you?”

Worrying his bottom lip between his teeth, Bucky drops his cigarette to the pavement and grinds it out under his shoe. The music swells louder inside as the band picks up the tempo. Bucky looks toward the door, then his eyes drop to Steve’s face.

“Same reason as you,” he says, a beat off.

_ Not likely, _ Steve thinks. “Why’s that?”

“I just needed to get out for a little while.”

“Are  _ you _ okay, Bucky?”

“Of course.” Bucky smiles, flatlined. When Steve raises an eyebrow, he sighs. “It can get a little crowded at home sometimes, y’know?”

“I wouldn’t, really, no.”

“That’s right—sorry.”

“Do you want to go somewhere more quiet?”

“That—” Bucky squints up at the sky, then looks at Steve. “Do you mind?”

“Of course not. We can go to mine.”

Steve points down the street. Bucky’s energy shifts, picking back up. He smiles, digs an elbow into Steve’s side, and gestures that he should lead the way. They keep quiet on the walk, prattling about nothing once or twice but mostly content with the sounds of Brooklyn.

The moment Steve latches the door behind them, Bucky asks, “You got anything to drink?”

“I can make tea.”

“Don’t play, Rogers, I know you’ve got booze stashed somewhere in here. You seem the type.”

“What, Irish?”

“You said it, pal, not me.”

Steve snickers, already turning to fetch glasses from the cabinet. “If you could, there’s ice in the—”

“Got it.”

While Bucky digs through the ice box for the tray, Steve patters into his room. Bucky’s right—he does keep the whisky well and truly stashed away, hidden beneath his socks. He doesn’t trust his locks or his neighbors. Back in the kitchen, Bucky has their glasses ready to go. Steve pours them both a healthy two fingers’ worth.

Bucky holds his glass aloft. “To the Dodgers.”

“Oh, good Lord.”

“What?”

“You’re such a—”

_ “What?”   _

“Nothing, fine—to the Dodgers!” 

Steve taps his glass to Bucky’s, the ice clinking together. They both take a slow sip, not breaking eye contact. Steve could blame the alcohol for the way he goes suddenly hot under his collar, but he’s not stupid. He understands perfectly well the thrill that burns through him is entirely to do with how Bucky takes a seat at the table without being told to, like he’s comfortable here.

Bucky launches into statistics about this season, talking with his hands the more he drinks. Steve doesn’t even have to feign interest; it may be the whisky this time, but he thinks he’s coming around to baseball. Anything that brightens Bucky up like that is worth a second look, anyway.

They keep drinking and laughing, and it’s the greatest relief in the world to Steve. He hasn’t mucked it all up, not yet. Even though he can feel himself smoldering like a hot bed of coals, wishing he could reach across and swipe the moisture off Bucky’s lip, taste it on his thumb—it’s easy to keep his hands to himself. 

Nothing has to change. He doesn’t have to let it.

He  _ wants, _ though. The more they drink, the harder it is to ignore it, blaring in the back of his brain like an emergency siren.

Rather than the other way around, though, it’s Bucky’s foot that finds his under the table. Their shoes have mysteriously disappeared—Steve doesn’t recall when, exactly, that happened. Steve thinks for a moment he’s just kicked the table leg, but then he realizes it’s Bucky’s socked toes against his, prodding.

Bucky’s telling a story about Rosie, nonchalant. Perhaps he’s not aware he’s doing it. It could be that he’s just a tactile drunk. Steve wouldn’t know.

“I could fix your socks, you know,” Steve interjects.

Bucky pulls up short, frowning at him. “You what?”

“Your socks. There was a hole. I could darn them for you.”

“A hole in my sock?”

“When you sat for the portrait,” Steve sighs, “yes, you had a hole in the heel of your left sock, or didn’t you know?”

“You know, you never did show me that portrait.”

Steve inhales, fiddling with his empty glass. “Would you like more whisky?”

_ “Steve, _ you have to show me!”

“I don’t  _ have _ to do anything, actually.”

“Please, Steve, I’d really love to see it. You’ve never shown me your art before.”

Steve levels a surly look at him, but it’s short-lived. When Bucky sticks his lower lip out in an exaggerated pout, a laugh bubbles up out of Steve’s chest; he’s gone. They’re both drunk, besides, so it’s not as if Bucky’s exactly firing on all cylinders. It’s likely that he’ll look at it for two seconds before he starts off on baseball or electric wiring again.

Steve says, “Fine.”

“Yes!”

His bag is on top of his dresser, so Steve pries himself out of his seat to go get it. Steve finds he feels almost eager to show him. They are drunk. Maybe it won’t matter what Bucky sees on the page. There’s a chance he won’t remember it so much anyway. Feeling confident, Steve turns to see that Bucky has followed him. He stands in the doorway to Steve’s bedroom, glass in hand and looking expectant.

“So?”

“So, go back to the kitchen where the light’s better,” Steve says, breath short. He flaps a hand, and Bucky acquiesces with a laugh. Steve follows him and thunks his bag on the table. “Fix us another while I find it.”

Steve knows precisely where inside his bag the drawing lies, but he wants the liquid courage. Bucky fetches the whisky while Steve rifles through pages. The glasses slosh and threaten to spill when Bucky returns them to the table. 

Steve swipes his up in one hand and takes a swig. His fingers on the paper’s edge tremble. For a beat, he’s certain he could distract Bucky, change the subject and make him forget all about it. This is his last chance.

A voice clears its throat in the back of his head. It might be his, or it could be Peggy’s.  _ Did you really cross the entire ocean just to turn cowardly now? _

Setting his teeth, Steve slides the drawing free and sets it atop the table. “Here.”

Bucky shuffles in close to see it. Steve leans in too, close enough that Bucky’s sleeve brushes his forearm. He can the smell the whisky on Bucky’s breath, with the way his mouth hangs open as he stares down at the page. Steve’s gaze flits from the drawing—practically obscene, now that he thinks on it—to Bucky’s face. He has this look in his eye, like—

“Holy shit, Steve.”

Steve’s stomach flips. “Come again?”

“Shit.”

“I’m—Buck, I need you to elaborate.”

“It’s—wow,” Bucky breathes.

Steve still can’t tell just what Bucky means by all this. “It’s being considered for the year-end gallery showcase.”

“My face?”

“The very same.”

“Wow.”

“Do you like it?”

“Steve, do I—” Whatever he’d been about to say, Steve may never know. There’s a crash as glass hits the floor—Bucky’s whisky slipping through his fingers to smack and shatter against the hardwood.  _ “Shit!”  _

“Oh, Bucky, it’s—”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Really, worse has happened.”

Steve sets his own glass aside and squats to gather the shards. Bucky meets him there, hands scrabbling to pick up the broken glass. His face is beet red.

“Careful, you’ll cut yourself,” Steve says.

“I’m sorry.”

“Will you—fuck, Bucky, leave it alone.”

He grabs Bucky’s hand before he slices his fingers all to shreds. There’s no need for him to make up for a drunken fumble; spilled whisky is nothing to cry over. Bucky tries to wrench his hand away, but Steve holds fast. Bucky’s fingers flex in his grip. His chest heaves, trying to find his calm again, so Steve lets his thumb brush over Bucky’s palm. He means it as comfort—that’s all. 

“I didn’t mean to break it,” Bucky mutters.

“I know.”

Here on the floor, Bucky’s eyes find Steve’s, searching his face. If he’s looking for anger, he won’t find it. Steve offers him a smile and squeezes his fingers. Bucky looks at their joined hands for an instant before turning toward Steve again. He takes a slow breath.

“That drawing’s really nice.”

“You think so?”

“Of course I do.”

“I’m glad to hear that.” The hardwood is starting to bother Steve’s knees, but he dare not move until Bucky does.

Bucky’s fingers stroke over Steve’s knuckles. “I noticed you’ve been taking better care.”

“I just do what you taught me,” Steve replies, strained.

“It’s a good thing we met, then.”

“I think so.”

“It’d be a damn shame if you messed your hands up, Steve.”

“I’m only ever trying to—”

“Yeah, I know what you’re trying to do.” In one fluid movement, Bucky’s standing, dragging Steve up with him. He withdraws his hand and shoves it in his pocket. “Look, I ought to get home.”

“I’d offer to let you stay, only there’s just—”

“The one bed.”

“Yes.”

The energy in the room has shifted in the last five minutes. It hasn’t gone cold, no—expressly the opposite. Steve can see the flush in Bucky’s cheeks. He can feel it in his own, spreading down, hot all over. It wouldn’t take much effort at all, to step forward, lay his palm against Bucky’s chest to find the heartbeat responsible for all that color in Bucky’s face.

“Do you really have to go?”

Bucky’s mouth twists.

“I could sleep on the floor.”

“I’m not letting you sleep on the floor of your own bedroom, Rogers.”

“I’m just looking for solutions.”

“To what? Do we have a problem?”

“I don’t think you should walk home alone when you’re drunk. That’s all.”

“I’m not drunk.”

“That’s a load of shite.”

Bucky snickers, wobbling on his feet. “I like it when you curse.”

“Fuck off. Let’s clean up your mess, first of all.”

They manage to do it properly this time, with no one risking injury by grabbing shards of glass with their bare hands. With the glass in the waste bin and a towel soaking up the whisky, Steve pours them both a cup of water and presses one into Bucky’s hands. He sinks into a seat and gulps it all down within seconds. Steve fetches him a refill from the sink before settling down with his own.

He’d forgotten that he’d left the drawing out. Bucky has pulled it toward himself, so that it lies in front of him on the table. Again, he’s wearing that entirely indecipherable, slack-jawed expression—the one that makes Steve nervous; makes him ache.

He reaches across the table to lay a hand at the drawing’s edge. Bucky glances up, brow furrowing.

“I don’t want it getting ruined,” Steve says.

“I guess I have a reputation now.”

“You said it, not me.”

Bucky hums, smiling, but when Steve starts to slide the paper away, Bucky sets his palm flat against it to hold it in place. “You told me you would know what it means, when you were done.”

Steve holds his gaze, arrested. “Did I?”

“Do you know? I don’t know so much about art, so I look at it and I think—wow,” Bucky says. “But I couldn’t tell you what it means. To me, it’s just me in your bed.”

“That’s what it is.”

“It’s what? What’s it mean?”

“You’ll smudge the pencil, Buck.”

When Steve tugs gingerly at the paper, Bucky lets it go and pulls his hands into his lap. Steve puts the drawing away, glad to be rid of it, ready for the room to feel light and easy again. He gets up to go store his bag atop the dresser. When he returns to the kitchen, Bucky is on his feet, shoes back on.

“It’s getting late,” Bucky says.

Steve’s eyes flit to the clock above the range. He’s right.

“Thank you for tonight,” Bucky continues. “It’s been nice.”

“Of course. You’re welcome here any time—just drop by.”

“I don’t mean to hurry out on you.”

“Church in the morning, I know.”

Bucky scrubs a hand over his face blearily. He still looks drunk, and worse off for it too. “I’ve actually got—I’ll have to skip out tomorrow, too much work to do. Think the good Lord might forgive me anyway?”

“If he’s any kind of good, then he ought to.”

Bucky laughs, rough in the back of his throat. Steve forces a smile.

“Bucky, could you—humor me a second, will you?”

“What is it?”

“Walk toward me in a straight line, so I know you won’t trip and die on your way home.”

Bucky rolls his eyes, grumbling something about being able to handle his alcohol, but the corner of his mouth twitches like he’s fighting a smile. Leaning back against the counter, Steve crooks a finger at him, insistent. First, Bucky reaches out his arms and taps each index finger against his nose. Then he starts a heel-to-toe procession across the short space of the room, his eyes on Steve’s the whole way.

For his part, even inebriated, Bucky retains most of his usual poise. There’s only one problem: he’d forgotten to tie his shoelaces.

In his last steps, his foot snags on them, tripping him. It’s not enough to make him fall flat on his face, thankfully—but Steve finds that suddenly, as Bucky struggles to right himself, hands bracket his waist on either side of the counter. Steve’s lips part on a gasp as he reaches out to steady Bucky, to keep them from crashing together.

Bucky’s face looms inches from his own. His breath rushes out hot against Steve’s skin. “Damn laces,” he mumbles.

“That’s alright,” Steve says. His hands pet at Bucky’s hips, to make sure he’s still stable. “Are you okay?”

“Am I—yes.”

Steve hears it when he swallows. Though he’s standing firmly on both feet now, Bucky makes no move to retreat. This close, Steve can see how Bucky’s pulse jumps at the side of his neck. It’s as if he can hear it in his head, its staccato thumping reverberating like a drum in the room. With Bucky as close as he is, with Steve’s hands set against his sides, the vitality of him is nothing less than undeniable, unignorable.

Steve couldn’t pull away from him if he tried, even if Bucky wasn’t holding him here. There’s no mistaking the searing look in his eye. Steve may have been drinking, but he isn’t stupid. 

Or perhaps he’s precisely stupid enough for just one slapdash, brazen attempt to do something about the feeling that’s spiralling outward from the center of him.

“I’ll tell you what the picture means,” Steve whispers, “but I think you already know.”

Bucky’s lips press together, then part again as he shifts, sliding incrementally closer. “Do I?”

“Don’t play the idiot with me.” Steve fists one hand in Bucky’s shirt, over his belly. “You’re not an idiot, Bucky.”

“I don’t know about that,” Bucky says, low and strained, barely audible.

Steve yanks on his shirt, surely wrinkling it. Before he can string together a counter-argument, Bucky ghosts even closer, nosing at Steve’s temple. Steve freezes under his attention, somehow understanding that if this is to continue toward its inevitable conclusion, he must remain stock still. If he so much as flinches, Bucky is liable to spook, retreat like a stray cat. The increasingly rapid rise and fall of Steve’s chest is the only thing that might give him away.

The tip of his nose glides from Steve’s hairline to his brow bone, lower, exploring. His breath, hot from an open mouth, smells like whisky. Steve thinks,  _ If I have to wait one more second, I’ll die. _

He doesn’t have to wait.

Bucky’s mouth finds his, and there’s still a question at his lips, a sense of skepticism. It’s strange to Steve, that Bucky could seem so sure of himself while dancing, his body made to move—then become this.

He would linger on it, only at that moment, Bucky must decide to hell with it all.

It becomes a real kiss then, rather than just a meeting of mouths. Bucky presses into him, still searching, like Steve might have the answer hidden between his lips. Steve does his level best to give Bucky whatever it is he’s looking for.

His hands clutch at Bucky’s hips, and he takes too.  _ This _ is what he’d wanted. He thinks that he could die, right here in his kitchen, and feel perfectly content about it—rapturous even. Bucky’s mouth on his answers every question he’d never even thought to ask.

It’s over, just like that—quick and hot as lightning.

Bucky draws back, meets Steve’s heavy-lidded eyes, then wrests himself backward a step. His jaw works. He stares at the floor, hard.

“I need to go home, Steve,” Bucky rasps.

“You don’t need to.”

“Stop it.”

Steve’s hands go limp and slip away from him. Once freed, Bucky puts another three feet between them. A respectable distance; the distance of friends.

“Fine,” Steve says.

“Look, this—” Bucky thrusts a hand in the air between them.

“Don’t, _ please,” _ Steve says. He’s surprised by his own desperation.

Bucky must be, too. It’s enough to make him look up again.

“Just go home, if you need to,” Steve tells him. “But please, don’t say anything yet. I couldn’t stand to hear it.”

“Steve—”

“Get home safe, Bucky.”

Bucky has to take a moment to tie his damnable shoelaces, bending low to loop them together till they’re tight and non-threatening. Steve watches, fingers curled into claws around his elbows, as Bucky smooths his shirt back out. Then there’s his jacket, his hat. 

When it seems that he’s ready to leave, Bucky meets Steve’s eye again. For all that he is dressed now, he hardly looks put together. If anything, Steve is more worried about him making it home now than he was before. But he knows there’s no way he could get him to stay, not now. It’s better that he leaves, takes a moment to himself.

“Goodnight, Steve.”

“Goodnight.”

Bucky moves toward the door, then pauses with his hand on the knob. “I’ll see you around?”

Steve rolls his eyes. “Of course you will.” 

It’s not as if Steve is going to let him forget that this happened. No, now that it’s out in the open—that’s where it’s going to stay.


	6. Chapter 6

He sleeps through his alarm clock the next morning. It isn’t until a neighbor pounds on the wall near his head that Steve registers the incessant ringing. He slaps a palm around the nightstand till he finds the clock and switches it off. With a groan, he flops onto his back and contemplates the merits of just going back to sleep.

His head throbs. Someone may as well be banging pots and pans inside his skull for all he can think through it. If he does opt for more sleep, he will at least need some water and aspirin first. There should be some left in the cabinet—he’ll only have to get up to fetch it.

He had wondered, sometime between his second and third glass of whisky after Bucky had left, whether he ought to hit the breaks and put the bottle away before he drained it. He never did have the best record of handling his booze well. Predicting this morning’s outcome was as simple as counting to five—an obvious, linear progression.

His skin wouldn’t stop buzzing, though. He would have done damn near anything to get rid of the feeling.

So he had stayed up half the night, drinking, trying not to stab a hole in a piece of thick artist’s paper. There’s another drawing of Bucky lying in the kitchen somewhere. Steve can’t recall whether he had left it on the table or the counter, but he remembers what it looks like.

The way Bucky’s face had looked standing over him, crowding him close, just before he’d kissed him—Steve thought, since it’s seared in his mind like a brand anyway, he may as well put it somewhere where he can look at it again.

It hadn’t comforted him at all. If anything, it had made him feel worse. He thinks he may have thrown up in the sink at some point.

His head still spinning, there’s just one thing that keeps Steve from retching onto his bedclothes this morning. In the light of day, with his right mind returned to him, he remembers how torn Bucky had looked just before he left. There had been some part of him—wedged deep, maybe, but it was there—that hadn’t wanted to leave. The trepidation in his voice, when he had asked Steve that last question, had been tangible.

That much, at least, makes Steve believe he can salvage this. Bucky, though he had left, wasn’t running away from him. Perhaps he just needs some time to consider if Steve is worth jeopardizing his reputation and livelihood.

Steve snorts a laugh, then groans, his stomach churning uncomfortably.

For him, the choice is easy. He would risk getting deported if it meant he could kiss Bucky again. The way he’d felt, hand knotted in Bucky’s shirt, wet lips soldered together—what’s the point of being here at all, if he can’t have that? He will love this country with every beat of his heart if Bucky touches him again. It’s enough to inspire him for the rest of his days. 

It’s enough to make him halfway hard.

“Christ,” he mutters. He can’t be bothered to deal with that this morning too. Rather than do anything about any of it just yet, he rolls toward the wall and goes back to sleep.

 

In another hour, he’s managed to scrape himself off the mattress and down the hall for a wash. Twenty minutes later, he has his shoes on and is debating the politeness of going out with his hair still wet and plastered to his head. It takes roughly fifteen seconds for Steve to come to the conclusion that he doesn’t give much of a damn about being polite this morning. His hair never looks good anyway. He tugs a cap down low over his forehead before setting out the door.

The streets still bustle, even on a Sunday morning. Steve walks quick as he can among the other people going about their business. What are they up to today, he wonders? Where is everyone else going? He hasn’t a clue, just as no one that passes him has any idea why he’s striding along with such purpose—nor do they care, probably. Everyone has somewhere to be.

His heart rate picks up when he turns the last corner.

The lights are on inside this time. Steve has never been here when the place was open. He feels he ought to knock anyway, offer some kind of warning that it’s him coming—but he’d look ridiculous rapping his knuckles against the door of an open business. Besides, what’s the need for a warning anyway?

A bell dings when he pushes through the door.

“I’ll be with you in just a moment,” Bucky calls from the back room.

The lurch in Steve’s stomach could have to do with the hangover. It could—that’s almost certainly a contributing factor—but he knows the real reason. He’s halfway to the back room when the door swings the rest of the way open. Bucky appears at the threshold, a pair of pliers hooked over the waist of his trousers. He stops short. To his credit, his expression hardly changes; it’s his hand, flying out to grab the doorjamb, that gives him away.

“Don’t you have a tool belt?” Steve asks.

“What are you doing here?”

“I came to see that you’d made it home alright.”

“Well, I did.”

“Now I’m thinking maybe I’ll buy some light bulbs.”

Bucky quirks an eyebrow. “Really?”

“No, not really,” Steve says. He closes the distance between them by half.

“Rogers,” Bucky warns.

“What? You want me to leave, Bucky, all you have to do is say the word.”

Bucky leans his weight into the hand against the doorjamb, the other coming up to rub at his face. The dark circles under his eyes tell Steve he hadn’t slept all that much last night either. He studies Steve for a beat, then sighs and drops both hands. Without a word, he steps aside, a silent invitation.

Steve takes it, careful not to touch as he passes. Just as with last night, he doesn’t want to frighten Bucky away from him. He’ll work up to it.

At the snick of the door closing behind them, Steve spins to face Bucky, one eyebrow raised. He hadn’t expected the privacy.

“I figure if you’re going to yell at me,” Bucky says, “we might want to do it behind closed doors.”

“Why do you think I would yell at you?”

“Because I—made an ass out of myself, last night.”

“Did you?”

Bucky shoots him a scowl. “You were there.”

“Yes, I was.”

Rather than try to get to the point, Bucky sinks into the chair at the secretary desk. He tosses the pliers on top of the mess of papers spread across its surface. The papers flutter and resettle; the chair creaks as he shifts. Steve glances around the room, at the work table where a disassembled radio splays its guts in neat array. A bout of nerves flutters in his stomach. To help quell them, he doffs his hat, fusses with his hair—still a little damp. 

“I don’t mean to interrupt,” he says.

“Yes, you do,” Bucky volleys. “You knew I’d be here.”

“Still, I can go.”

“Don’t.”

“Don’t?”

“No, Steve.” He lets out a shaky breath, hands flexing over his thighs. “Don’t go anywhere. Is that what you want to hear? I want you to stay.”

As much as Steve had already convinced himself of that, hearing Bucky confirm its truth aloud lifts a weight off his shoulders. He stands straighter, vindicated. Bucky practically came right out with it too. Whatever his reservations, they’re already trembling at best.

Steve knows the feeling. He takes a step closer. When Bucky holds his gaze, unblinking, he takes a few more.

Bucky’s voice is lower when he speaks again. “What  _ do _ you want?”

“I think you know.”

This is the wrong thing to say. Bucky stands suddenly, the chair legs screeching against the floor. “Stop telling me what I do and don’t know, alright? Jesus H. Christ, Rogers, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing here.”

_ “You _ kissed  _ me.” _

_ “Jesus.” _

“What, do you expect me to pretend that’s not how it went? Do you expect me to believe you didn’t know that’s what you were doing?” He really didn’t mean to yell, but here he is, inhaling deep. “I guess I shouldn’t assume for you, Buck, but it felt pretty obvious when your tongue was—”

“We were  _ drunk.” _

“Barely.”

“Shut up.”

“No.”

“Why are you trying to pick a fight with me about this? Can’t you just let it lie?”

“No, I can’t!”

They stand there, at odds, neither one willing to back down. Steve isn’t sure how this escalated so quickly, when only a minute before they had been speaking in hushed tones. Bucky scowls at him, looking every bit as riled up as Steve feels. He may be a head taller, a more experienced fighter, but Steve knows that if it came down to it, he’s scrappy enough to take him. His right hook’s gotten better since—

“Oh, hell,” Steve mutters. Then he grabs Bucky by the suspenders with both hands and yanks him low enough to crash their mouths together.

Steve swallows Bucky’s garbled noise of protest. He has no idea what he’s doing, but it doesn’t matter, he just has to hold out long enough. Bucky’s hands fly to his shoulders, start to shove him away—but then, like the radio dial turning to a new station, his fingers tangle in Steve’s collar to drag him closer. Then Bucky’s showing him how it’s done, and thank Christ one of them’s done this more than once.

One of his hands finds Steve’s jaw, cupping it roughly as he licks at the seam of Steve’s mouth. Steve is a fast learner; he figures out enough to be dangerous quickly enough. Bucky’s making soft little sounds at the back of his throat, like he’s enjoying it—like Steve may have done something right this time.

Steve pulls back with a gasp, just long enough to say, “I knew it,” before plunging forward again.

“What is it this time?” Bucky says against his lips.

“You want this just as badly as I do,” Steve says, and Bucky’s thumb drags over his cheek. “I see it now. You’ve wanted it since the beginning.”

“I don’t know what I want.”

“Yes, you do. You know exactly what you’re doing. So do I.”

“Insofar as this part goes, sure, but—”

“But what?”

“My family could walk through that door any second now.” Even as he says it, even as Steve can see the worry at the corners of his eyes, he only holds Steve more tightly against him.

“That’s true,” Steve says.

“Doesn’t that—I don’t know, worry you?”

“Do you want to go somewhere else?”

“Where would we go?”

“I don’t know.” Steve reaches up to lay his palm against Bucky’s neck, to feel his pulse beneath his skin. “There are people liable to walk in on us anywhere, Bucky.”

“That’s my point.”

“That’s mine too. There’s always going to be someone on the other side of the door. For all we know, there could be someone in the store right now.”

“Fuck,” Bucky gasps, but it’s less an exclamation than an exhalation. His head tips forward onto Steve’s shoulder, and his whole body quakes. He’s  _ laughing, _ Steve realizes, when he hears the wheezy noises. Steve joins in, stroking the hair at the nape of Bucky’s neck. It’s a decided role reversal, that Steve is so sure-footed while Bucky stumbles his way toward clarity. Then again, Steve has had the benefit of a revelation and a week to reckon with it. Last night may have been the first time Bucky had understood any of the intent behind his actions. He’d needed a moment, to adjust.

Steve sets his lips to the shell of Bucky’s ear. “Kiss me again?”

Bucky recovers himself, arms looping around Steve’s back to bundle him. His head turns, mouth to Steve’s neck, breath hitching against the thin skin there. “Steve,” he says.

“It’s okay, Buck. We don’t have to talk about it,” Steve says. “Hell, I don’t want to. Just kiss me again.”

“Yeah, okay.” As if it was no trouble at all, Bucky grabs him by the waist and slings him onto the work table. Steve grunts, surprised and warm, as radio parts go cascading onto the floor. “Shit. I still gotta fix that.”

Steve grabs his hand to keep him from starting now and places it back at his hip. “You’ve got time.”

“You sure we should be doing this?” Bucky asks, even as he sidles up as close as he can get.

“I’m done caring about ‘should.’ Don’t you want to?”

His green eyes, bright as the impending summer, search Steve’s. “So much.”

Then he kisses Steve again, just as he’d said he would. To think that it could be so simple as this—Bucky’s hands at his ribs, Steve cradling his face—makes him want to laugh right there into Bucky’s mouth so that he can swallow the sound. Steve knows what he wants, now. He sees, too, that it only requires as much hand-wringing as they decide to devote to it. There’s no question, when Bucky lays his palm flat against Steve’s thigh—both of them know what it means.

Bucky will have to get back to work soon. Steve ought to stop by to see Father Healy, since he hadn’t attended mass. They both will have to return to their days and appear for all the world to be unchanged.

Steve isn’t sure that he feels changed—not precisely. Rather, it’s that when Bucky sets his lips to the hollow under Steve’s ear, he feels as if he knows himself better. He lets his hands wander, rucking up Bucky’s shirt to learn what the skin at the base of his spine feels like, and learn about himself too.

He wonders, had he never come to America, if he might have gone his whole life without knowing. Perhaps he’d have figured it out; perhaps Bucky was the catalyst, an integral part, the only thing that could have set him off. He supposes it doesn’t matter much either way. He knows now.

When Bucky’s family arrives home a short hour later, Steve sets aside the electrical manual he’d been perusing and gets up from the desk chair to greet them. Rosie doesn’t give Bucky time to move from work table before she’s clambering into her brother’s lap. Bucky catches Steve’s eye over Rosie’s shoulder and smiles, big and warm.

“Stay for lunch, Steve,” Freddie tells him.

Still looking at Bucky, Steve raises an eyebrow. When Bucky nods, almost imperceptible, Steve turns to Freddie with spread palms. “How can I help?” he asks.

 

He stands at the room’s edge, trying his damndest not to hover like a gnat. The people milling about don’t spare him so much as a glance, thankfully; he must be doing fine then. His foot taps nervously against the floor. He really doesn’t mean to pry. In fact, he’d rather not know what anyone is saying about it. He ought to have just stayed at home and forgotten the whole thing. There’s sherry on a table at the other end of the room, but long though he might for a cup of something strong, fetching it would require leaving his post.

Not that he’s posted. He isn’t paying attention at all.

“Steve? Hey, Steve!”

Whipping his head around, Steve spies Therese pushing her way through guests to get to him. She tows Lydia along behind her.

“How are you both?” Steve asks.

“Oh, splendid,” Therese says.

Lydia leans toward Steve to be heard over the chatter. “She’s just had someone offer to buy her piece.”

“Really? That’s wonderful,” Steve says.

Therese rolls her eyes. “Lydia’s exaggerating. It’s only my great aunt.”

“I am not exaggerating. She offered you cash!”

“Anyways, Steve,” Therese says, “where’s yours? I haven’t seen it yet.”

Steve points to the display wall in the middle of the room, sheepish. “Just there.”

Lydia snickers; she must see right through him. Therese only raises one penciled eyebrow before linking her arm through Lydia’s. “Well, let’s see, shall we?” she says, and the two of them flounce away.

Steve decides he ought to have some sherry after all. 

Paper cup in hand, he spends some time browsing the rest of the gallery. It’s not just works from his classes on display. There are paintings in oils, watercolors, acrylics; drawings done in charcoal and colored pencils; even some ceramics and mixed media sculpture displayed on pedestals. He’s careful to read each placard, to take his time as he moves toward the far end of the gallery again. It becomes less a courtesy and more that he’s enraptured, the farther he drifts. For students, his peers are certainly doing some great work.

As he finishes his prowling, he notes two people standing before his own artwork. Not just anyone either, it dawns on him—Father Healy and his figure drawing professor, chatting amicably. Steve ducks his head, keen to escape notice, but he’s gotten too close.

“There’s no use hiding, Steven, I’ve spotted you,” Father Healy says.

Steve looks up, mouth twisting wryly. Father Healy smiles, amused, and crooks a finger at him. There’s no escaping it now, and Steve had been the one to invite him after all. It seemed the right thing to do, what with Father Healy being a large part of the reason Steve is here at all.

“Your ears must have been burning,” Father Healy says. “Professor Calamett and I were just discussing you.”

“All good things, I hope,” Steve says.

Professor Calamett cracks a rare smile. “You’re a good student, Mr. Rogers, unless there’s something I hadn’t noticed.”

Steve ducks his head, willing his cheeks not to burn. “Thank you.”

“Now this—excuse me while I embarrass you further, but I must.” The professor angles back toward the display wall, pointing to where Steve’s drawing—now framed—hangs under a light. “The linework is crisp without feeling lifeless, but the play of light on his face is what I find particularly compelling. You can see that he’s thinking very hard about something.”

Father Healy glances at Steve to ask, “Do you remember what it was?”

Steve’s hauls in a breath, fishmouthing.

“Oh, no,” Calamett cuts in, “don’t tell us. That’d make it less interesting.”

“Well, we’ll leave it a mystery then,” Steve says around a relieved laugh.

He’d been nervous, having it on display. That may as well be his heart hanging from a nail on the wall. From his eavesdropping and this conversation, though, he’s learned that no one seems to see it precisely the way he does—or if they do, they must not mind. His piece is hardly the most provocative in the showcase, if it can be called that at all, or even the most explicit thing he’s drawn this semester. That does give him an idea or two, however; perhaps he’ll start a series. 

“Who is this in the picture, Steven?” Father Healy asks. He cuts Steve a curious look over his glasses. “He looks familiar.”

“You may have seen him at the dances,” Steve says. “He’s a friend.”

“Who’s a friend?”

Breath catching, Steve turns to find that standing just behind the three of them, there’s Bucky. He looks sharp, if a bit windblown from the blustery weather outside. Steve had told him he wouldn’t need to wear a tie, but he’s gone and worn one anyway. The color makes his eyes stand out. He must catch Steve eyeing it, because his smile turns crooked.

“Ah, our subject makes an appearance,” Professor Calamett says. “I’ll say, Mr. Rogers, you picked a dynamic one.”

“What’s this about?” Bucky asks.

“We were just admiring Steven’s rendering of you,” Father Healy says, turning to indicate it.

“Oh, yeah,” Bucky huffs. There’s the lightest touch of pinks to his cheeks. “Apparently I need new socks.”

“That you do,” the professor says. He turns to Steve, tipping his paper cup toward him. “Congratulations again, Mr. Rogers. You’ve got quite the eye—I looked forward to seeing how it develops.”

With that, he drifts away from them, off to mingle with other students and guests. Left with just the three of them, Father Healy turns his attention to Bucky.

“I’m Father Colin Healy,” he says, extending his hand toward Bucky.

“James Barnes.” They shake, firm. “Steve’s told me about you.”

“Has he now?”

“Speaks very highly of you, sir.”

“I would hope so,” the priest says.

“Thank you for coming tonight, Father Healy,” Steve says.

“Oh, dear boy, I wouldn’t have missed it. I’ll be quite candid and tell you how proud I am to see you succeeding.” He casts his eyes back toward the drawing, nodding to himself. “Yes, I knew there was something. You’ll do great things, Steven, if you keep persisting this way. I just wish that your mother were here to see you.”

“I do too,” Steve says. He’ll write to her about tonight, the moment he’s at his desk again; she’ll want to know every detail down to his tie clip. “Thank you, Father.”

“Of course, of course.” Father Healy waves a hand, as if it’s nothing at all. “Now, I’ll leave the two of you to it. I’d like to see the rest of the showcase while I’m here.”

“Nice to meet you, Father,” Bucky says.

“You as well, James. I’ll see you in service, Steven.”

Then he’s gone too, and it’s just the two of them.

“So,” Bucky says. He casts a look at Steve, then about the room, leaning back as if to indicate amazement. “Some big deal this is, huh?”

“I don’t know about that,” Steve says.

“Looks fancy enough.” Bucky smiles, toothy, then pivots toward the wall. “Oh, it’s got a frame and everything, like you’re some kind of professional.” He leans in, squinting at the label. “‘Untitled’?”

“I couldn’t think of anything suitable.”

Bucky glances sideways at him. “Yeah,” he says.

Steve holds his gaze for a long while—longer than he ought, in public, but Bucky doesn’t look away either. Then he does, dropping his eyes to his shoes, but there’s a soft smile on his lips. Steve touches his wrist, just lightly, fingers ducking under the cuff to press against skin.

“Thank you for coming tonight.”

“Of course.”

“Even if you were late.”

_ “Hey _ now.” Bucky jerks his sleeve back to get a look at his watch. “You told me half past, which is what time it is right now.”

“I'm  _ kidding _ , Buck.”

“Christ,” Bucky mutters. When Steve starts laughing, Bucky swats at him, knocking their shoulders together. “You ever gonna let me live that one down?”

“When it stops being funny, sure.”

“You ought to quit art school and join up with a comedy club. You’re a card, truly.” 

“Maybe I will. Now,” Steve says, grabbing for Bucky’s elbow to steer him across the gallery. It's high time they stopped standing in front of his own piece anyway. He’ll introduce him to his classmates too, once he tracks them down in the crowd. If they're anywhere, the refreshment table is as good a guess as he has—they’ll make it that way eventually. But for now, the fabric of Bucky’s sport jacket smooth under his fingers, Steve leads him toward a diptych at the front of the room. “You’ll love this.”

“Oh, will I?”

“Well, you’d better.”

 

Outside the Court Street station, Bucky offers to walk him home. It’s out of his way, and Steve has half a mind to refuse on principle. He knows the way to his building, but he’s feeling amenable after the night he’s had—and besides, it’s not as if he wants to say goodbye to Bucky just yet. 

The streets are quiet for a Saturday night, even quieter the deeper they get into the neighborhood. Bucky walks beside him. His presence is steadying and warm, as it has been all evening. Their hands brush, now and again, till Steve starts doing it intentionally just to feel the heat curl in his gut; just to see the twitch in Bucky’s cheek. 

“Your friends are nice,” Bucky says.

Steve snorts. “That’s generous of you.”

“What, you don’t think so?”

“I think they were rude to you—that’s all.” He’ll have words with Arnie later about where he can keep his inquiring nose. He hadn’t meant any harm, Steve knows, but it still struck him as impolite even if Bucky had been in good spirits about it all.

“Think I can’t handle a little ribbing, huh, Rogers?”

Steve glances sideways to find Bucky’s narrowed eyes. His lips are pursed, a challenge tucked between them. Steve is only too happy to rise to it.

“I don’t know,” he hums as they turn the corner onto his block. “Seems to me you have a delicate ego.”

“Oh, is that so?”

“Sure.”

Bucky’s mouth squirms. It’s not without effort, but he keeps up the act. “You saying you can handle it better than me?”

“How do you mean—”

But before Steve can get the words out, Bucky sets on him. His hands find Steve’s ribs underneath his sweater. Over shirt fabric, he starts  _ tickling _ him, and it’s a dirty trick. Steve squeals a laugh and tries to duck away, but Bucky only follows his retreat. Steve’s back hits the wall, and then he’s cornered. Bucky shows no mercy, laughing too, bright with mirth. For all that he writhes and laughs, Steve does manage to grab his wrists and hold them. Bucky’s hands go still under his, but it takes Steve a long minute to catch his breath again.

When he manages, he realizes Bucky has him pinned by the middle to his building. His chest heaves, short of breath again for an altogether different reason.

“You’re wicked,” Steve tells him. Bucky huffs a laugh, eyes flashing. When he licks his lips, Steve is struck by the image, how close it is to that moment in his kitchen. His hands flex around the bones of Bucky’s wrists. “Will you come inside?”

“If you’ll have me.”

He minds the creaking steps on his way up, Bucky behind him. No one’s in the halls to see them, but they keep quiet anyway. The key catches and sticks in the lock—damnable thing. Steve shoves a shoulder into the door to help it along. The handle gives and turns then. He holds the door open for Bucky, who strides past with his sloping grace. Steve gets the door shut behind them and throws the lock again. 

The deadbolt slides into place with a heavy  _ clunk.  _ The sound reverberates in Steve’s head like the clanging of church bells.

He turns to ask, “Would you like something to drink?”

“No.”

“Are you sure? I’ve got—”

“Steve,” Bucky says. “I’m okay.”

“Oh. Fine.”

Still hovering by the door, Steve fiddles with his shirt cuffs. He wouldn’t mind a drink himself. Now that the sherry’s worn off, his nerves are starting to get the better of him. Bucky must read the apprehension on his face, because he sighs and sticks a hand in one pocket.

“Look, Steve, I’m not asking—”

“I’m just thinking.”

“About what?”

“You.”

“Me?”

“Who else?”

Bucky smirks and nods, leaning his hip against the table. “Tell me what you’re thinking about.”

“How happy I am that you’re here,” he says. “How much I want to sleep with you.”

Bucky’s lips part around an exhale. His face looks so lovely when his cheeks flush like that—watercolor blooming over paper. Before Steve can lose his nerve, he marches across the room toward him till they’re toe to toe. Bucky meets his eye and chuffs a laugh.

“What?” Steve asks.

“You just look so determined.” Bucky reaches up to scan fingers over Steve’s cheek. There’s the slightest tremble in his hand, and it heartens Steve to feel it. For all of their bravado, the both of them are nervous. “It’s cute. Are you sure this is what you want?”

“Yes,” Steve says. “I want you.”

Bucky cups Steve’s jaw, palm fitting flush against the bone. Backlit by the table lamp, Steve can see his throat working. Rather than wait for him to speak or move, Steve covers Bucky’s hand with his own. He turns his face into Bucky’s skin and presses a kiss to the heel of his palm. Slowly, he pulls Bucky’s fingers to his mouth to kiss them too. When Bucky drags the pad of his index finger along Steve’s lower lip, Steve catches it between his teeth and draws the digit into his mouth.

Bucky inhales, soft, without breaking eye contact. “You’ll be the death of me, Rogers,” he rasps.

Steve hums a laugh around his finger before letting it slide free. He leans forward, burying himself against Bucky’s chest. Bucky’s arms wrap tight around him. He tucks his face into Steve’s hair. His body is so warm around Steve’s, even through his clothes. Steve wonders what his skin must feel like, how flushed he must be beneath the fabric, pink and eager and smooth where the elements don’t touch him. Steve feels himself growing stiff between his legs at the thought of Bucky laid out in his bed again. It will be a different kind of exploration this time, though he means to be no less diligent about it. He’s drawn his map already; now he’d like the chance to navigate it.

“Let’s sit on the bed,” Steve says.

Bucky’s hand still where they had been rubbing circles into his back. “Okay.”

They find their way to the bed’s edge, losing their shoes somewhere along the way. The boxsprings whine under their combined weight. Bucky shifts intentionally till they squeak again. He meets Steve’s eye and raises one eyebrow.

“There’s always the floor,” Steve says.

Bucky barks a laugh, then slaps a hand over his mouth, eyes wide. Steve just rolls his eyes and grabs his hand, prying it free. There are better things to cover his mouth than a hand—Steve’s mouth, for instance. 

He hadn’t known what they would do about their clothes, but Bucky is more than capable with buttons and zippers. Steve yanks at Bucky’s tie, pointedly rough, and Bucky smiles against his mouth. Then there’s nothing between them at all save the air. Steve paws at him, indelicate, fascinated by the shivers and soft sounds he can elicit just by dragging his nails over Bucky’s ribs.

There’s too much of him, Steve realizes, when Bucky lays himself out along the bed. It would take him hours to commit every inch to memory the way he wants to. Perhaps another time. Tonight, he’s far too impatient.

He’ll start with his cock.

Steve’s eagerness must be catching; Bucky can’t help but touch him too. His palms are slick as he clutches at Steve’s shoulders, his back, his hips. In this, Steve at least understands something of what he’s doing; there’s not so much difference, one cock to another. Bucky’s approval shows in his face and his muffled groans. He drags Steve up to kiss him, distracted and off-center, but his hand is sure when it skims over Steve’s belly and between his legs.

Steve gasps and quakes under Bucky’s attention. His calloused palm makes the slide rough, but Steve finds he doesn’t mind so much. To have someone else’s hand on him is an entirely new experience. He had heard how different it would feel, but he hadn’t expected—this. The color in his cheeks flares and spreads like wildfire while Bucky mouths at his neck.

“If you don’t stop,” Steve pants, “I’ll—”

“Isn’t that the point?”

But he backs off anyway, his hands rubbing over Steve’s thighs instead. He shifts and rolls till Steve is sheltered underneath his body. When Bucky leans forward, Steve rises on elbows to meet him in a kiss. Their hands still wander, habit rapidly forming, and Bucky gasps into his mouth when Steve gets a handful of his ass. Steve only smirks and palms it again, firm as a ripe peach in his grip. Someday he might have to take a bite.

The room grows so warm that they turn slick with sweat. It makes the slide of skin easier, and Steve likes the taste of it on Bucky’s chest besides. The hair there tickles his nose. Bucky has his hand between Steve’s legs again. Steve can sense a building obsession behind the look in Bucky’s eyes, but it’s not as if he minds. He’s similarly afflicted; nothing could compare to the weight of Bucky’s velvet-smooth cock in his grip. He’ll be trading his pencils out in short order.

Bucky’s hand drifts lower, teasing Steve’s balls. Steve groans and sinks his teeth into Bucky’s collarbone. The surprise of it makes Bucky jump. His hand slips lower and brushes just briefly over Steve’s most private part. Bucky mutters an apology and withdraws, but Steve’s gasp had less to do with shock and more with realization.

Was any part of him private to Bucky anymore? He wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure he wanted it to be either. There weren’t any secrets between them any longer. He had already kissed him, and that had been the worst one. This, if anything, was simply an extension, an expansion; a culmination of his desire.

Steve takes Bucky’s hand and puts it back. Bucky’s brow steeples with surprise.

“Don’t you dare ask me again if I’m sure,” Steve says. He spreads his legs wider to make himself clear.

It takes time and a trip to the dresser for something to ease the way, but then Bucky is coaxing him to hitch his legs higher and settling between them. Steve expects him to pause again, but he doesn’t. There’s blunt, warm pressure and then Bucky slips inside him. Steve gasps and hisses, but when Bucky leans back to catch his eye in question, Steve answers by rocking up to kiss him. The movement drives Bucky deeper inside him. They both groan, and after that, there is no other moment to question a thing.

Steve clutches Bucky tight as he moves above him. He’s trying to be gentle, Steve can tell, but he can’t hold out for very long. Soon, the force of his thrusts start to push Steve’s sweat-slick back up the mattress. The bedsprings are surely protesting, but Steve can’t hear a thing over Bucky’s noises of pleasure in his ear, over his own breathy moans. The ache is so overwhelming he feels as though he might burst with it—like his chest might crack open so that all the world can see the way his heart thunders.

Only it’s not all the world. It’s only Bucky, who sounds so pretty when he comes.

Later, when they’ve found most of their faculties again, Bucky cracks open the window so he can light a cigarette. Steve lies with his head in Bucky’s lap, well beneath the cloud of smoke every time Bucky exhales. He presses lazy kisses to Bucky’s hip and thigh while Bucky pets at his sweaty hair. Though it’s spent and limp now, Bucky’s cock is so close to Steve’s face as to be a real temptation. His fingers would glide so easy, the way it’s still wet. He licks his lips, then gets a different idea—something else he’d like to try sometime.  

When Bucky reaches forward to stub his cigarette out against the brick, Steve twists in his lap to look up at him. He grins, easy, but Bucky’s answering smile is subdued.

“What?” Steve asks.

Bucky flicks the butt out the window before reaching down to smooth Steve’s hair back from his forehead. “How are you?”

“Wonderful.”

“You never came.” Bucky’s eyes flick down Steve’s body, where his own cock lies, soft and dry.

“Oh,” Steve says, frowning. He had noticed, of course, but it hadn’t seemed particularly important at the time. He had been feeling so  _ much. _ It was as if his own body had been held secret from him. He hadn’t known himself at all till the moment he took Bucky inside of him. His body, which failed him so often, could only give him so much at a time. Perhaps it had even been trying to spare him—if he had come too, he may well have died in this bed. He hadn’t given a second thought to it, but it seems to have troubled Bucky.

He’ll just have to reassure him, then.

Steve sits up and throws a leg over Bucky’s lap so that he can straddle him. “I promise you,” he says, sinking low till his ass settles against Bucky’s soft cock, “that I enjoyed myself.”

Bucky’s jaw works, but his hands find Steve’s hips when Steve starts to shift. When Bucky is hard and gasping beneath him, Steve grasps him at the base and fits Bucky back inside himself. He works over him, languid and purposeful, pleasure throbbing in him each time his thighs smack against Bucky’s. When he grows stiff again too, he fists his own cock, but Bucky bats his hand away to stroke him himself.

His orgasm hits him like a brick to the head. He falls forward, Bucky’s mouth at his hairline as he spills all over the both of them. He lets Bucky come inside of him this time, just minutes later, to be certain that he’s proved his point. 

They fall asleep in a tangled heap. The bed is hardly big enough, and Bucky will have to hurry home in the early morning. Steve knows he’ll be sore tomorrow, tender as he feels even now. None of that matters so much right now. Splayed like a ragdoll across Bucky’s chest is the most comfortable and content he’s ever felt in this bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy St. Patrick's Day! I'm only distantly Irish and diet Catholic, but I'm going to celebrate by making colcannon and looking over our final chapter. Thank you to everyone who's read so far. Your kudos and comments mean a lot to me, and if you'd like to go another step, remember you can support this work by [reblogging the masterpost](http://bride-ofquiet.tumblr.com/post/170697794378/mine-is-the-shining-future-in-late-summer-of-1937).
> 
> I updated the tags for the final chapter, so please pay them mind going into it.


	7. Chapter 7

The mail smacks against the range when Steve tosses it down—a dangerous place to put it any other season, but he hasn’t had to use it for heat in weeks. In fact, before he even loosens his tie, he heads for the window to throw the lock and lift it open. He’d worked up a bit of a sweat on his walk home from the office. To think, it had been stiflingly hot when he had first arrived in Brooklyn; then he’d survived the winter; and now here he is, headed into summer’s clutches again.

He’d finally repotted his plant last week. The lengthening days have been good for it, too—it’s flourishing where he keeps it on the windowsill. He ought to get it a companion, something that flowers.

After watering the plant, he patters into his room, kicking off his shoes. He slips his tie free and unbuttons his shirt too. He tosses them both over the foot of the bed then decides that so long as he’s not going anywhere tonight, he may as well lose the belt too. Leaving the clutter for later, he shuffles on socked feet back to the kitchen for a cup of tea. He shifts the mail onto the table to light the range.

Once his tea is steeped, he takes it to the table to rifle through the mail. There’s not much, but there never is. The thin envelope with Brooklyn College’s emblem stamped in the corner lays on top—may as well get that one out of the way first.

The sheet inside lists his course grades for the term. He’s done well again—not that he had expected he would fail, but it’s nice all the same to see it down on paper. He’ll have to show Father Healy next chance he gets. They ought to discuss the fall term soon, as well as Steve’s intentions to pay him back every cent for his education. The paper company doesn’t pay much, but he’ll scrape it; he knows how.

Bucky will be proud of him, too he’s sure. Perhaps he’ll have a special way of showing him.

Smiling to himself, he checks the return address of the other envelope—a letter from Peggy. He doesn’t bother with opening it neatly, too eager to hear about how her own term had ended. It’s just the one page, which is unusual for her, but he unfolds it and begins to read.

_Dear Steve,_

_I am afraid I have bad news for you. I’ll cut to the chase—your mother is sick. When I arrived back in Enniscorthy after the term was over, I wanted to go visit with her, but my parents told me I couldn’t. You know me; I went anyway. As it turns out, the reason they didn’t want me going is that she isn’t at home. I tracked her down to St. Senan’s, where she’s being held while recovering from surgery. She has tuberculosis, Steve. Her doctors are doing what they can—you know how they love her at the hospital. The surgery was something called artificial pneumothorax. I don’t know the details but they say that it seems to have helped. I have been to see her a few times, when they let me in. She is very weak but seems to be fighting. I don’t know what else the doctors have planned, if anything. Another thing—she did not want me to tell you about any of this. I’m inclined to believe that she has known about it for some time. She wanted me to promise not to tell you, but I thought you deserved to know. It’s your mother, after all. I’m so sorry, Steve. I hate to be the one to have to tell you. Please send me any questions you have and I’ll do my best to find answers for you._

_Love,_ _  
_ _Peggy_

As soon as he’s finished, he reads it again—twice, three times to make sure he hasn’t misread or misinterpreted. It is Peggy’s handwriting, with her address on the envelope, but he can’t help but hope this is some kind of practical joke. Someone playing a trick on him. He can’t think who would be that cruel.

The words start to blur together after half a dozen passes. It doesn’t matter; he could recite it by now. The letter slips between his fingers, almost of its own accord, and falls against the table. He doesn’t bother to pick it back up.

His tea grows cold. He doesn’t notice.

_She did not want me to tell you about any of this._

Why wouldn’t she want him to know? He tells her everything. He tells her—

He’d forgotten to write, after the showcase. He had promised himself that the minute he set foot through the door, he would write. Only it had been late, only he hadn’t been alone—writing home to his mother had been the last thought on his mind, then. All he had thought about was his own selfish desires, his own wants, how it felt to have Bucky touching him like that.

There’s a knock at the door. He doesn’t hear it.

If he had taken five minutes to write—perhaps if he had paid closer attention. It could be that it’s in her letters, between the lines. Had she been trying to tell him? He ought to have noticed somehow, picked up on the clues. But he’s been too wrapped up in himself these past few months, too busy unraveling his own mysteries to spend any time bothering with his mother’s.

When _was_ the last time he had written to her, anyway? Last week?

“Steve?”

He glances up to see Bucky standing in the open doorway. “Did I forget to lock the door?” he asks, voice hollow.

“You must have.”

“Dammit.”

“Why didn’t you open—”

Before the question is out of Bucky’s mouth, Steve vaults from his chair and pushes him aside to throw the lock on the door. He double-checks that it holds, then spins to scan the room. The range—no, he turned that off. Through the open door of his bedroom, he can see his clothes strewn about, shoes so carelessly kicked under the foot of his bed. Bucky tries to catch him by the arm, but Steve shakes him loose and barrels into the bedroom.

“Thoughtless,” he mutters to himself. He grabs his shirt, shakes it out, lays it over the bed to start folding with jerky movements. She had bought him this shirt for his birthday last summer—it’s a fine one. His shoes too, one of just two pairs and he had tossed them aside like they were nothing, like it hadn’t cost her anything at all to provide him with shoes as fine as these.

“Steve,” Bucky repeats from the threshold, “what’s wrong?”

“How could I just—I have to put these away, properly.” Steve grabs his belt, whirls toward the dresser, yanks open a drawer. “Christ, but it’s all a _wreck!”_

Without any preamble, he grabs the drawer at either end and tries to wrench it free. It catches and won’t come; he only jerks harder. The dresser scrapes against the floor, teetering, threatening to fall down on top of him. The picture frame falls forward.

“Cut it out!” Bucky grabs him around the middle to haul him away, but Steve clings to the drawer. Why won’t it just come loose? When Bucky holds him tighter, Steve throws an elbow backward into his ribs. He hears a gasp, but then, before he can get his hand back to the drawer, Bucky has him by the wrist.

“Let me _go!”_

He doesn’t. Bucky’s other hand reaches for Steve’s where it’s curled around the drawer holder. Steve fights him, thrashing in his grip, but one by one, Bucky pries his fingers loose till he loses his grasp on the drawer completely. His breath coming too quick in his chest, Steve writhes to try to free himself, stepping on Bucky’s toes through his shoes—but Bucky just holds him fast, his arms immobilizing Steve’s against his chest, pinning Steve to him.

The fight drains out of Steve all at once. In the space of a second, Bucky’s grip goes from holding him still to holding him upright. Steve’s breath is ragged. His heart pounds at his ribs like an angry fist at a door. In his ear, Bucky shushes and soothes him. Steve sags backward toward the sound, turning malleable in his arms.

“C’mere,” Bucky says. Then he’s sinking down, backward, and Steve goes with him till they both hit the floor. Leaning against the foot of the bed, Bucky cradles him close. “I need you to tell me what happened, Steve.”

“It’s—” He stops, breath hitching on a sob. When he had he started crying? He frees a hand to scrub at his face. “My mam.”

Steve feels Bucky’s intake of breath more than he hears it. “Is she—?”

“She’s alive,” Steve says, “but she’s very sick.”

“She wrote to you?” Bucky’s hand rubs slow circles over Steve’s hips.

“No—Peggy did. She was _hiding_ it from me.” It’s this that hurts as much as the rest of it. His chest shakes on an exhale. He’d been so _happy_ not ten minutes ago.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” Bucky says. “What’s with the drawer? Are you—”

He doesn’t finish his question. Steve looks to the dresser, where the drawer still hangs open. “She didn’t like me to treat my things poorly.”

“Let’s get you up,” Bucky says, gripping Steve’s shoulder. “Get you some water, alright? Then you can tell me what’s going on.”

Bucky guides Steve back to the kitchen and fetches a glass of water before he sits down across from him. He waits until Steve has drunk the whole glass before he says a word, and even then, it’s just to ask if he can read the letter for himself. Steve shrugs and pushes it across the table; he doesn’t want to look at it for another second. Bucky takes the paper in hand, watching Steve over the top for a moment before he starts to read. Slowly, a hand comes up to cover his mouth. Steve watches as his eyes go round, then as he tries to sweep his reaction under the rug.

He sets the letter aside and says, “Maybe it isn’t so bad.”

“Bucky,” Steve sighs.

“All I’m saying is, people make recoveries from this.”

“People _die_ from this.”

“You can’t think like that.”

“How else am I supposed to think? Since you know so much about it—”

“Don’t you pick a fight with me, Rogers.” Bucky’s face turns steely. “I’m only trying to help. You don’t want my help? Fine, but just say so instead of getting sour.”

Hands stiffening on the table, Steve bristles—then sags back into his chair like his air has been let out. His vision swims with unshed tears again. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize.” Bucky reaches out to lay his hand over Steve’s. “I can’t imagine what you’re… _I’m_ sorry, Steve.”

“For what?”

“For—all of it. Is there anything I can do?”

Steve snorts a laugh, turning his hand over under Bucky’s. He watches their fingers together, Bucky’s threading with his. Strange, how well they fit. “She’s across the ocean, Bucky. What can _I_ do?”

“I don’t know.”

The silence stretches out for an insufferable minute. Steve glances up to find Bucky already looking at him. He looks as at a loss as Steve feels, his face drawn with worry. But Steve had already said—his mother is across the ocean. If there’s anything either of them can do, it can’t be done right now.

“I think I’d like to just go to bed,” Steve says, “if that’s alright.”

Bucky’s eyes dart to the clock, but even though it’s hardly eight o’clock, he only nods. “Of course.” He starts to draw his hand away. “I can—”

Reflexively, Steve tightens his grip on Bucky’s hand. “Will you stay?” He swallows, thick. “I don’t want to be alone tonight.”

“Of course.”

Bucky helps him set his room to right again, first. Steve turns down the bed, leaving the extra quilts at the foot; they won’t need them. Since Bucky doesn’t have any pajamas, Steve doesn’t bother with any either and strips down to his boxer shorts. The narrow bed frame is a tight fit, but they know that already. Bucky holds out his arms, Steve tucks between them, and they make it work.

He tries to sleep. He squeezes his eyes shut and puts in an earnest effort, but even with Bucky stroking his back, he can’t make himself relax. His body trembles. At first he thinks he may just be cold—shock can do that, he knows—so he burrows closer to Bucky’s warmth.

“That’s okay, Steve,” Bucky tells him.

His chest heaves and as he exhales, the tears he hadn’t realized he was holding start to slip free.

“I’m with you,” Bucky says. He curls himself closer around Steve. “I’m here with you.”

He repeats it, soft, till Steve’s breath starts to even out again. Bucky’s undershirt is soiled and wet, but he doesn’t complain. It’s dark in the room now, the only light from the lamp in the kitchen neither one of them had turned off. He’s glad to have it. When he was a child, he’d always slept with a nightlight. Every night, his mother would tuck him in, kiss his forehead, then make sure his light was on before she left the room. He can’t remember when he stopped needing it—if he truly hadn’t needed it, or if he had simply decided he was too old. He wonders what she did with the light, after that.

“Will you go back?” Bucky whispers.

“She’s my only family,” Steve says. “I’m all she’s got. I need to be there for her.”

“I know.” Bucky’s hand smooths over his scalp. “Home is home.”

“I’ll have to—to talk to Father Healy, and Mr. Kirkland and I …”

“Do you have money for passage?”

“I think so.”

“I’ll help you.”

Steve frowns. Bucky’s aware of how tight Steve’s pockets are—but he has his own bills to pay. It wouldn’t be right for Steve to take charity from him when he has so little to give. “Bucky,” he starts.

Bucky interrupts. “I won’t force you to let me, but just consider it. Please.”

“Fine,” Steve sighs.

“We’ll talk in the morning, alright? Try to get some sleep.”

 

It takes just days to sort everything out. Father Healy does most of the arranging after Steve calls on him to explain the situation. On such short notice, Steve does wind up borrowing from Bucky—just a few dollars that he promises to repay first chance he gets. He has his ticket and all the necessary paperwork together, and his suitcase is packed.

Just before he leaves, he pauses to water his plant. He’ll head to the seaport soon, but there’s just one stop he needs to make first.

The lights are on inside. Through the window, Steve can see Freddie ringing in a customer at the counter. She spots him and waves him inside. The bell tinkles overhead.

“Steve,” she says, “I was so sorry to hear about your mother.”

“Thank you.”

“Bucky’s restocking the far aisle. You can leave your suitcase with me if you’d like.”

Trying for a smile, he sets it by the counter before he turns to search for Bucky. He finds him along the store’s back wall, arranging boxes of nails so they sit neatly on a shelf.

“Bucky?”

Bucky’s hand stills on the shelf, gripping its wooden edge hard. “Thought we said our goodbyes last night,” he says to the floor.

They hadn’t, not explicitly, but Steve has marks all down his chest that say it as well as anything else. Bucky had taken Steve into his mouth, and then neither of them had words. Steve still isn’t sure what the resigned set to Bucky’s shoulders had meant.

“I needed to give you something.” He fishes for it in his pocket then holds it out toward Bucky, who has now turned to face him. “Here.”

Bucky stares at the key in his hand. “What’s that for?”

“So you can water my plant for me,” Steve says, “if you don’t mind.”

“Oh.” Bucky frowns, his shoulders hunching the same way. Steve doesn’t know what it means this time, either. He had booked return passage; he’ll be back just in time for his birthday. His mother needs him now, but she’ll pack him off again once she’s better—and she _will_ get better, even if Steve has to will it into existence himself.

“Here.” Steve grabs his hand to press the key into it. “Don’t kill it, please.”

“I’ll try my best.”

“Will you write?”

“I told you I would. I meant it.”

Steve still hasn’t let go of his hand. “And will you take me to Coney Island on my birthday, like you promised?”

“Yeah,” Bucky huffs. It’s almost a laugh. “Anything you want, Steve, it’s yours.”

“Good.” Steve meets his eyes. “There’s still a lot you have to show me.”

“You’ll miss your boat if you don’t hurry.”

Steve reels him in by the hand and clutches Bucky to him. Bucky’s breath is in his hair as he hugs Steve close. They’re in the back aisle, and Steve can hear Freddie still talking to the customer, so he reaches up on his toes to press a kiss to Bucky’s cheek. Bucky slumps in his grip for a moment, then tenses again. He grips Steve by the shoulders and steps away from him.

“You gonna tell your ma about me?” Bucky asks.

“You think I haven’t already? Wrote to her in February. ‘Hi, Mam, I’ve just met the biggest idiot this side of the Atlantic.’”

Bucky smacks his shoulder before dropping his hands. He sticks the key in his shirt’s front pocket and jerks his chin toward the door. “Go on then, Steve.”

“I’ll write you from the ship, and soon as I’ve arrived I’ll let you know how she’s doing.”

“Sure,” Bucky says, already returning to his boxes of nails.

On the ship, Steve stows his luggage away and hurries back to the deck. He finds an empty spot of railing along the stern and plants himself there while the ship navigates out of the harbor. The morning sun glints off the water, the air growing steadily warmer. The breeze tugs at his hair. He grips the rail and stays there till Long Island disappears over the horizon.

 

“Steven, do you have the order slip for the Farrells?”

“It’s there,” Steve says. He points to the far end of the counter, where the slip is stapled to the top edge of a large paper bag.

“You got it together already?” Mr. Carter’s eyebrows raise.

“Yes, while you were having lunch.”

“Well, aren’t you just on top of things?”

Mr. Carter pats Steve on the shoulder as he bustles behind him toward the bag. Steve doesn’t have to look up from where he’s wiping down the shelves for the third time to know that Mr. Carter is unpacking the bag. He’ll check that everything is there, then repack it in precisely the same manner that Steve had done in the first place—the way he had been taught to do it. Steve knew better than to gather the order himself, but he’d been too idle. The shop is slow today. He can only handle so much dusting, and Mr. Carter has never liked the radio on during open hours.

He watches through the window as people pass along Cathedral Street. It’s a nice day out. Perhaps he would spend the afternoon by the river as it churned sluggishly south, the sun warming him. When the light started to fade, he would hurry home, where his mother would be waiting.

If he closes his eyes, he can almost imagine—

“We’ll be fine the rest of the afternoon, Steven, if you’d like to go home,” Mr. Carter says.

Steve starts, nearly dropping his dust cloth. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, yes, run along. Tell your mother I say hello.”

He hardly remembers why Mr. Carter had asked for his help in the first instance. It isn’t as if he’s needed, even on Sundays when it’s busiest, now that Mr. Carter has Tim Ward to pick up the slack Steve had left last summer.

It’s the sympathetic gesture again, he knows. Perhaps Peggy had said something to him. He would loathe it if it didn’t give him a reason to leave the house with regularity. He had never truly noticed how quiet the house on Friary Street can be—or indeed, how quiet Enniscorthy itself is. Brooklyn’s quicker pace had suited him more than he cared to admit. He would almost rather stay at the shop, to feel that he has something productive to do, but he won’t protest what is clearly a dismissal.

“I will, Mr. Carter,” Steve says. “Thank you.”

He doffs his apron and replaces it neatly under the counter before leaving through the front door. Instead of heading toward home, he cuts east to the bridge and across to the river’s far side. He keeps a bike stashed in the front hall for days he doesn’t feel like walking, but the weather is nice today. It isn’t so far.

The banks along the river, the trees, and Vinegar Hill to his east all flush a rich summer green in the bright afternoon sunlight.

The woman at the front desk hardly looks at him before handing him a visitor’s pass. They know his face well enough by now, here. He follows the long halls, the heels of his shoes clacking against the shining linoleum, till he finds the right ward at the hospital’s far reaches. It is only protocol, Steve knows, but compounded with the impersonally sterile white walls, it feels awfully lonely.

She has made it to a chair today, with a newspaper open in her lap. This is good—better than last week, though he has been careful with how much he hopes. The doctors had not wanted to send her home to an empty house, which Steve understands, but even now with him here they still seem reluctant. He has been insistent though; as long as there are no problems in the next two days, he can bring her home on Friday.

When she looks at up at his knock on the open door, he sees that some color has returned to her cheeks, even if the bone still seems liable to cut through the skin. Her smile still isn’t quite the same as it was, but she tries her best. Steve returns it.

“Steve, come in,” she says.

“Hi, Mam, how are you today?”

She brandishes the paper at him. “Have you seen this?”

“I have,” Steve says as he takes the chair opposite her bed. “You’ll be more informed than all the world leaders by the time you’re out of here.”

“That doesn’t seem like too hard a task, frankly.”

Steve laughs, happy to see her in good spirits today—to be able to see her at all. He had thought he had known, back in Brooklyn, how much he missed her. Every day he sees her, he is reminded that he had had no idea. He lost his father when he was too young to properly understand what his sudden absence meant. Now, though, he is old enough.

Still perusing the fold, she clucks her tongue at something. “If I live to see—”

Her voice is cut off by a hacking cough. She snatches a tissue from the box at her bedside to cover her mouth while Steve hurries to refill her water glass. It takes a long minute to pass. When it does, she looks winded, leaning back against her pillows. Her chest heaves, trying to catch her breath, but she holds out her tissue for inspection without Steve having to ask.

“Don’t know where,” she gasps, “you picked up such vigilance.”

It’s bloodless, thank God. Steve holds the water glass to her mouth. Her eyes slip closed as she drinks.

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Steve says.

She’s smiling again when he sets the glass aside, brushing her hair from her face before taking his seat again. She is like him, in that way: she doesn’t tolerate coddling. But, like she always did, he gets away with as much as he can.

“Are you staying long?” she asks.

“As long as you’ll have me.”

“Good.”

Her eyes are still closed, but Steve knows she won’t sleep so long as he’s here. He ought to leave, let her get some rest, but he knows how glad she to see him. Like he had said, he will sit in this chair till she asks him to go.

 

Peggy drives him to the hospital in the family car two days later. Steve had worried about how he would get his mother home and had thought of asking Mr. Carter, but Peggy hadn’t offered so much as told him they would take the car. She has always read him like a book; this time, he is grateful for it.

“How are you doing?” she asks him on the drive.

It’s not the first time she’s asked him this. He gives his usual answer: “Fine.”

“Steve.”

“What?”

“Don’t just brush me off. When I ask, I want to know.”

He shifts uncomfortably in his seat, staring out the window. The first time he ever rode with her in this car, she’d nearly killed the engine switching gears. Now, she is as good as anyone else on the road. He sighs, jaw working, but she’s right. They have been friends for far too long for him to bother lying to her.

“She’s coming home, isn’t she?” he says. “That’s good, so really, I’m fine.”

She hums, her mouth a tight line, and shifts gears.

Discharge and transport goes as well as Steve could have hoped. His mother is visibly exhausted by the time they get her home, so Steve helps her to the cot he set up in the front room. No more exertion than absolutely necessary, the doctors had said—which means no stair climbing. He can’t help but wonder if there is anything else they can be doing, if rest is the only prescription—how much good it can really do when her body has deteriorated like this. She seems so small and frail under his hands, as if she were the child now, liable to break.

“You’re the one looking grim these days,” Peggy says over tea in the kitchen. Her voice is low, so as not to disturb his mother’s sleep. “I promise, Steve, she really is doing so much better than she was.”

“It’s not that I don’t believe you when you say that, Peggy.”

“When did you become such the pessimist?” she chides, but when Steve gives her a sharp look, she shows him her palms. “I know, but if anyone can pull through, it’s her. You Rogerses are the most mulish bunch I have ever met. She might heal herself by sheer force of will.”

“Don’t go spilling our family secrets, now.”

She laughs, soft but bright, and the sound warms the whole house up. It’s good to have his mother home, at least—a step in the right direction.

“Why do you suppose she didn’t want me to know?” Steve asks.

“She was only trying to spare you.” Peggy reaches for his hand over the table. Her skin is softer than Bucky’s, like silk to cotton. “All she talks to me about is how proud of you she is. I think she was worried she would spoil all your fun in America.”

“It’s not been all fun,” Steve says.

“Well, of course not. I know that. I would think she does too.”

Steve takes a slow sip of his tea, for lack of a response. It tastes so much better on this side of the Atlantic. He’ll never know why, if it’s the tea itself or his mother’s yellow teapot or a simple trick of the mind.

“I saw you had some letters on the hall stand,” Peggy says.

Steve glances up, frowning. “Did you now?”

“Oh, it’s not like I’m prying, Steve.” She withdraws her hand to flap it at him. “You left them out in the open. Why haven’t you read them?”

He had read them—not the two in the hall, but there are two more upstairs in the nightstand of his childhood bedroom. Bucky writes to him, as he had promised to do. He is unused to writing letters, Steve can tell. His language is stilted, formal, so unlike the way he speaks. But there is something so distinctly Bucky there in his neat script too, as if it radiated up from the page, his affability and compassion such a natural part of him that it could never be entirely obscured.

He consistently misspells “definitely.” The mistake had filled Steve with such overwhelming fondness, the first time he had noticed its repetition, that he had had to set the letter down for a moment.

He hadn’t realized how much he would miss him.

Perhaps that is a lie; it may be that he hadn’t afforded himself the time to dwell on it. There hadn’t been time to dwell. There was passage to book, arrangements to be made at the office and with his landlord, a suitcase to pack. Any way he may have felt about the situation was irrelevant; to let that stand in his way would have been selfish. It had been imperative that he come home.

He thinks Bucky understood it—hopes he had, anyway. Steve had needed to prioritize his mother above everything else.

He had written Bucky from the boat and when he arrived, to update him as promised. Beyond that, though, he finds himself stuck every time he opens one of Bucky’s letters to respond. He can’t read the more recent ones. The thought makes him feel queasy, like seasickness, only the feeling spreads higher into his chest.

“Haven’t had the time,” Steve tells Peggy.

She regards him over the lip of her teacup. “I would understand if you were angry with me for instigating everything.”

“What?” Steve sets his own cup down with a clatter. “Why would I be angry?”

“We pushed you,” she clarifies.

“I could have said no.”

“Yes, but would you have?”

“It doesn’t matter either way.”

Her eyebrows raise. “Doesn’t it?”

He shrugs his shoulders. He had understood perfectly well why she’d done what she had; it wasn’t as if she had hidden her motives from him. His first few months had been rough, certainly, but then—everything had—

It’s not as if matters, like he had said. He was there, and now he is here again. There’s not so much difference between this summer and the last.

“Tea’s cold,” he says, reaching over to swipe her cup. He catches the skeptical look on her face in the instant before it fades. “Is that the lipstick I sent you for Christmas?”

“Oh,” she says, with a surprised smile. “It is—kind of you to finally notice.”

“The red suits you.”

“I think so too,” she says, and lets him get away with the subject change. He had missed her too.

 

“Mam, what do you want for dinner?” Steve asks, sticking his head around the corner into the front room. She’s curled on the couch under a blanket, book in hand. At his question, she glances up, pushing her reading glasses back into place on the bridge of her nose.

“I can cook,” she says, setting her book aside.

Steve rolls his eyes. “Mam, I have it.”

“I don’t mean to insult you, love,” she says, pushing her blankets away, “but your cooking is awfully bland. I wonder how you survive on your own.”

 _“Mam—”_ Steve rushes into the room to help her up. He gets a grip on her elbow, even when she tries to brush him off. She grumbles all down the hall and into the kitchen, where Steve already has pots and pans out.

“Will you stop hovering?” she mutters.

“I’m only trying to help!”

She points toward the knife block. “Help by peeling and dicing those carrots, then.”

Steve sighs, but allows himself to be relegated to chopping duty. She has had more energy this week, and he supposes it was only a matter of time before she insisted on acting on it. He is quietly happy to have her cooking again. Grudging as he might be about her pointing it out, it’s not as if she’s wrong about his own prowess in the kitchen. He’s been on chopping duty all his life for a reason.

Over dinner, his mother asks, “Are you going to the Athenaeum tonight?”

“Oh, no,” Steve says, dunking a bread crust in his soup. “I’ll just stay in with you.”

“You know you don’t have to.”

It’s a conversation they’ve had a thousand times before. He knows how it goes: back and forth till he acquiesces and leaves the house, if only to walk around the block a few times, or she realizes he isn’t going to budge. The familiarity makes his mouth go strangely ashy.

If he closes his eyes—

“Steve?”

It could be as if nothing at all had changed. He swallows, thick, and looks up at her. “Hmm?”

“Remind me again, what day do you leave?”

His eyebrows raise. “I’ll have to check my passage.”

“You can’t remember?”

“Well, I—it’s—” He cuts off, pressing his fist to the table. Last week, he’d gone into the post office to use the phone on his way home from work. He had been set to leave day after next, but he had called and withdrawn his ticket. He’d meant to bring it up, to think on when would better suit, but now that she asks—he isn’t sure that he had ever meant to rearrange it all.

“Steve,” she says, eyes narrowing, “you’re going back, aren’t you?”

He sets his spoon down, clattering against the side of the bowl. “You need me here.”

“Steve,” she starts.

“I left you here all alone, Mam. If Peggy hadn’t written to me, you could have—”

“Oh, love, no.”

“You could have _died_ and I wouldn’t have known for _weeks—”_

She holds a hand out to silence him, the other at her temple. Her eyes slide closed as she rubs at her forehead, breathing slowly. Steve sits in the silence, waiting, but he can’t help it.

“I never should have left you alone,” he says quietly.

“Steve,” she sighs. She shakes her head, eyes still closed. “I haven’t been as forthcoming with you as I ought to have been, clearly. I thought you understood.”

“Mam?”

She straightens in her chair and regards him across the table with tired eyes. “I’m going to tell you something, and I want you to listen.” When she pauses, he nods, his lips pressed together. “When your father and I first got married, we wanted to go to America. It was popular then, just before the war—only then there was the war and your father had to fight. When it was over, we promised, we would go. We made plans to. It was all set.”

She is quiet long enough that Steve asks, “Why didn’t you?”

“I found out I was pregnant,” she says. “I’ve told you before that I had complications with you.”

“You—you were put on bed rest.” Steve sinks into his chair, the pieces slotting together. “So you couldn’t go.”

“No, we couldn’t,” she says, with a small smile. “Then you were born, and you were such a colicky baby that we couldn’t possibly have traveled with you—though don’t take that to say I blame you for any of it, Steve. Time got away from us. It is what it is, but I’d always meant for you to be an American.” She laughs, loud and sudden. “You were born on the Fourth of July, for Christ’s sake.”

An image blooms in his head, unfurling like a morning glory. He sees how it might have been, growing up in Brooklyn Heights, trading out the Slaney for the East. Would he still have met Bucky somehow? Perhaps he would have known him as a child, playing stickball together in the street till their mothers called down from the window that it was time to come home.

He shoves the idea roughly away and asks, “Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?”

“I didn’t want you to feel obligated to live out your mother’s dream.” Her face darkens. “Only now it seems you’re feeling another obligation.”

“You’re sick, Mam.”

“I’m on the mend,” she insists, prodding his calf under the table with her slippered foot. “I won’t force you either way, you know. You’re welcome under my roof as long as you’d like to be here, but will you answer me one question?”

“Of course.”

“You did like it there, didn’t you?”

He considers her, her fierce blue eyes so like his own, till his breath gives out on an exhale. The smile sneaks onto his face despite himself. “I really did—more than I ever thought, Mam.”

“Then listen to me.” Her hand finds his on the tabletop. “I can survive the possibility of never seeing you again, Steve, if I know that you’re happy. What I can’t weather is thinking that you’ve decided to stay here out of some misplaced sense of guilt.”

He cradles her hand between both of his own. The seasick feeling wells up in him again, powerful, but he knows what it is now: real heartache. He can’t go on pretending he can return to his life here as if nothing has changed. The Carters’ shop, Friary Street, the people and the River Slaney—they may be the same, but Steve is not. He has a whole life three thousand miles from here. School and a steady job. He has a friend that’s watering his plant for him, waiting on him to come back home; a friend he misses so much that he can hardly bear to think of him.

There’s no way to fit a square peg into a circular hole. He had learned as much while still a child in the nursery. Perhaps he’d always been the square peg, and it had taken crossing an ocean for him to see Enniscorthy for what it was—a circle.

He takes a deep, hitching breath and makes his choice.

“I like living in Brooklyn,” he says.

His mother squeezes his fingers; the strength in her grip is a comfort. “Do you want to go back?”

“I do.” He meets her eye. “I miss it so much.”

She smiles, watery. “Then that’s that, love.”

 

His arms are tired by the time he makes the final turn to his block. In fact, his entire body feels boneless with exhaustion and the summer heat. Just the smallest distance now. A flight of stairs is nothing, comparatively, even if his legs are still wobbly from a week at sea. It hadn’t been so bad this time—old hat by now; he’s practically a voyager. His bunkmate hadn’t fared so well, but Steve had known how to help. He had known what to say, what to do, because he had done it before.

The sound of a radio drifts down the stairwell. Past the landing, he hears a commercial jingle fade into the even drone of a newscast—then that, too, fuzzes out into a crooning song. Someone must have flipped the dial.

Outside his door, Steve sets his trunk down to fish the spare key out of his trouser pocket. He pauses and cocks his head. It sounds almost as if—

He tries the doorknob. It gives under his hand, even without the key. He grabs the trunk, his chest gone tight, and eases the door open.

Bucky sits at the kitchen table, leaning over the account book for the hardware store. A pencil dangles from his fingers, like an unlit cigarette he’d forgotten. He’s only in trousers and an undershirt. The thin white cotton sticks to a faint line of sweat along his back. His feet are bare. There is an instant, as Steve opens the door, where he spots Bucky’s toes tapping along to the radio.

Bucky looks up and stills. He could be a statue, Steve thinks—could be displayed in the Metropolitan, if Steve learned how to carve; if he were willing to share him. Only then he moves, dropping both hands to smack against the table and leaning back in the chair till it creaks, and Steve realizes nothing would compare to the real thing in motion.

“Hi,” Steve says, like he’s shy, still standing in the doorway.

Bucky only blinks at him. He opens his mouth, closes it, repeats the cycle twice till he gives up and just shakes his head. His chest heaves, then he _laughs,_ looking both delighted and disbelieving.

“Bucky?” Steve asks.

Bucky catches his breath, sobering. “I was only thinking—guess we’re even now, huh?”

“What?”

“I thought,” Bucky says, ducking his chin before glancing back up, “that you might’ve stood me up, Steve. That you weren’t coming back.”

Steve’s trunk clatters to the ground and tips sideways when he drops it. He kicks the door shut behind him and crosses the room, reaching out for him before he even makes it there. Bucky’s hands find his waist and haul him in the last foot. He buries his face against Steve’s chest, arms tight around him. Steve threads his fingers into Bucky’s hair and clutches him close. He’ll have him closer, later, as close as he can get him—but this is what he wants right now.

“I almost didn’t,” he admits.

Bucky just nods against him. He’d known; he would have understood, if Steve had stayed, and never tried to argue.

“But I’m here,” Steve says. “I’m home now.”

Bucky pulls back enough to meet his eye. “Yeah?”

“I am.”

The radio sounds so clear and sharp. It had crackled so much that Steve had hardly ever used it, but Bucky must have fixed it for him. The plant too, on the windowsill—it looks lush and healthy. Steve prefers a different shade of green, though. He pulls at Bucky’s collar till he gets the idea and stands, looking down at Steve with a smile so wide it aches in Steve’s chest.

“I suppose you’ll be wanting your key back,” Bucky says.

“No.” Steve shakes his head. “No, I want you to keep it.”

When Bucky cradles Steve’s face between his hands to kiss him, Steve meets him with resolve. He supposes, as he stands in his kitchen trying not to squash Bucky’s bare toes in his eagerness, that it doesn’t matter so much what or how long it took him to get here. Fate or inevitability or whatever else—he doesn’t care. The sounds of the borough filter in through the cracked window, soothing and familiar as a nursery rhyme to him now. Bucky gathers Steve up in his arms and starts backing them toward the bedroom. Steve, laughing against his neck, feels perfectly at home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading and supporting this story, which was particularly close to my heart. Once again, feel free to share [this post](http://bride-ofquiet.tumblr.com/post/170697794378/mine-is-the-shining-future-in-late-summer-of-1937) to help others find this work. I'll leave you a historical note, which you are free to do with what you will.
> 
> According to a 1948 report compiled by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, more than 300,00 foreign-born persons enlisted or were drafted into the U.S. Army between July 1, 1940, and June 30, 1945. Of these persons, over 109,000 were noncitizens. While naturalization was not required as part of nor guaranteed by military service, the Second War Powers Act of 1942 exempted noncitizen service members from certain requirements of naturalization. This made it easier for these military personnel to become U.S. citizens, even when serving overseas. Between 1942 and 1945, the INS conducted 13,587 overseas naturalizations for members of the U.S. armed forces.


End file.
